Dark Visions
by OneMagician
Summary: AU, 60 years pre-curse: The Dark One is a deal-maker, and every path he goes down will turn fate - his own and that of others. This is a little tale of Darkness and the tiny spark of Light that will illuminate an otherwise empty universe, if necessary, as the Lady of Avonlea discovers the man behind the beast that's been watching over her all her life...
1. Beautiful

_Beautiful_, he thought to himself when he first saw her in his mind. _No more, but certainly no less_. A chestnut-colored flow of unruly curls fell softly around her shoulders, pale skin as though to match a fairer shade of hair, and vibrant, crystal-blue eyes in a kind, round face.

This kind of clear and vivid vision of something or _someone_ that would be of importance to the future of the Dark One came to the sorcerer only on very rare occasion, and when it manifested itself this distinctly, he was in the habit of paying serious attention – even if the moment was possibly extremely ill-timed. Like this one just now.

Using fireballs to tear holes into the front line of ogres that represented the vanguard of the army to come in its wake, he followed up with ultrasonic waves that only this manner of creature could hear, shattering them from the inside out. The magnificent grey winterdragon he was riding pulled up before the human archers behind them could take their aim. Doubling back across the frosted woods where the king's infantry was still cowering, all of five-hundred men shaking in their boots, Rumpelstiltskin maneuvered the dragon so he could take out the confused bowmen with several well-directed huffs of searing blue fire from the depths of his chest, releasing an earsplitting scream as the flames consumed every living being beneath them. Seconds later, Rumpelstiltskin busied himself with annihilating the remaining ogres as they fled. The frozen ground shook with the weight of their pounding feet. The Dark One sent a curse upon them that turned them to stone in mid-stride. They crumpled and crashed heavily to the earth, turning to dust. A gusty wind carried off what was left and dispersed it across the open meadow that lay ahead.

The Dark One's eyes roamed over the snow-covered field, following their black ashes on the icy breeze, and saw the young woman again. She was standing right there, only years, _no, decades_ into the future, when the killing-field of this day had been turned into a poor attempt to cultivate wasteland. Incapable farmers that had been at war too long would try to raise a crop of wheat and barley to feed the hungry people of this land tomorrow and fail.

She stood amid acres of sickly and dying plants in the heat; crumbly, dry soil at her feet. It was so hot that the air seemed to glimmer and dance just above the parched ground, a nightmare for the hopes she'd invested. It was plain to see that the crippled plants she'd been discussing with her father's aged counselor were beyond help, but the Lady was adamantly insisting the man at her side look into the book she was waving under his nose. The counselor wasn't listening to her; he was merely indulging his Lord's daughter with a complacent smile and a nod as she tried to explain the concept of building a dam and a viaduct to him some miles away to sustain the crop. The Dark One could feel _her_ frustration welling within his own heart, as though he shared some kind of connection with her. He didn't – at least not that he was aware of, since he didn't even know his Beauty's name. But he might, apparently, or so his Gift of foresight was telling him, whatever fate had in store for them.

_Beautiful_, he thought again. _No more, but certainly no less_. Especially when she got angry. Who in all the world was she to conquer his awareness now, of all times? Why was he seeing her face, though he was riding a winterdragon through a storm he'd created for the sake of darkness and confusion in the midst of a battle, of which he had no idea why he was even fighting it. The nobleman he'd struck his last bargain with hadn't even specified his motives for the carnage, and the Dark One had agreed to do his bidding on a mere whim he couldn't explain at all.

She was _everywhere_, all of a sudden. There was no getting his Beauty off his mind, and the Black Sorcerer shook his head, as if that could clear it of her, but it didn't – not right away. He was growing tired of the bloodshed, unable and unwilling to continue, but there was a certain point of destruction he'd yet to reach in order to turn the fortunes of this war in favor of the Duke he'd been conversing with. Disgruntled with the entire situation and annoyed at himself, he indignantly flung a huge fireball at the infantry emerging from the woods below him now. Scattering the soldiers it hadn't killed, the dragon held close to the tree-line before pulling up once again to circle the battlefield and get a better vantage point of the army the Dark One was supposed to wipe out for the honor of Avonlea. Satisfied with the result of his final doings for the day, the sorcerer stroked the splendid, four-horned _metallic dragon's_ neck, and it responded with a low, thrumming noise from deep within its chest. The magnificent creature, thirty feet long from slender white snout to thick, horn-spiked tail flapped its mighty feathered wings, and gracefully weaved through the air for a final survey.

The sorcerer got another flash of the young woman's shape coming towards him. He was seated at his spinning wheel, and he was pleased with her appearance. The image turned into another succession of moving pictures, a dream-like scene showing her take a seat next to him and speaking to him softly. He heard himself mumbling a reply, but couldn't make out the words as they slipped from his mouth. Then, unexpectedly, her lips touched his, creating small explosions of… anxiety… discomfort… uproar… and at the same time complete happiness within him. The sensuousness of her soft, but increasingly intense caress made his stomach clench. She smiled at him as though she was seeing him for the very first time, _really seeing him_, and he felt the tingling sensation of her eyes on him ripple through his body, making him shudder, before he regained himself and realized that he was _changing_. So, he thought, as anger took control, it's_ her_.

_She_ was the devil who'd break his curse. Pure, unadulterated rage changed places with the seldom, warming bliss he'd just foolishly allowed to overcome him, and he trembled with the force of it, as he grabbed her arms and began shouting mean and spiteful things in her face.

The cries of the injured on the field brought him back to the here and now: Scorched and broken bodies lay bleeding on the snow-covered ground, twisting in agony, as the Dark One was himself writhing in his own pain at this instant, and the booming sound of canons in the distance told him there'd be more death and damnation here, even if he was to leave right now… _so much more_. He bade his dragon to alter its course, and headed off to set about sealing his pact, quenching all remorse that the better man he'd once been might have felt at the sight below.

The sorcerer had the dragon set him down in the middle of the encampment, right in front of the Duke's sizable and luxurious marquee. He slid off his back in one lithe, fluid motion and patted his muzzle. The dragon's color was entirely suited to the nature of the icy winter its master had brought to this landscape, and he was barely visible when Rumpelstiltskin broke off skin contact with him. The soldiers that had scurried away upon seeing them come down cautiously returned to their posts and whatever they'd been doing before, lulled into a kind of calm assurance by the dragon's song, and hardly perceived its shape by the time the Black Sorcerer left him to stand guard at the entrance of their Lord's quarters.

"Are we done out there?" Maurice inquired offhandedly, instead of greeting his benefactor when the Dark One appeared. Not receiving his answer right away, the young Duke looked up and fixed a hard gaze to Rumpelstiltskin's, haughtily bearing the coldness that he was met with. The Black Sorcerer's lips curved upwards in an evil sneer as he briskly crossed the red woven carpet with filthy, mud-crusted boots, and he curtly motioned the royal's advisors to leave them. One of the bearded men he was sending away seemed vaguely familiar, and the Dark One's glance lingered on the unpleasant, pudgy face for a moment in passing, his quick wit finally connecting it to the arid field next to the woman he'd been having visions of. How interesting, he thought. How very, very interesting.

This time, he allowed the image that was taking shape in his head to form fully. He saw himself in the window of his tower watching the woman that would break his curse walk away from his castle. The tears in her eyes as they met his own one last time pierced his soul, and he knew he'd been wrong to cast her out. Then, time shifted again, and years later, she returned to him in some other strange world, asking him if he knew her at all. He was awed by what he felt when he touched her shoulder – there it was again. Love. A thousand volts of it, fazing him for a second, and fading out the _pawnshop_ and everything in it.

"Not quite," he finally told Maurice in clipped tones, returning his attention to the matters at hand reluctantly – but not before his intent stare had registered with the Duke's counselor, evoking an outbreak of cold sweat and spreading an acrid smell of fear. "All magic comes with a price," he continued, "and I've come to collect, lest the celebration of your victory lets you forget your end of our agreement."

He bent over the low strategy-plotting table in the center of the marquee and brushed the bulk of the figurines on the nobleman's map of the kingdom off of it with a flick of his hand. They fell clattering to the ground.

"What - ?" Maurice started, but was cut off by a small, fair-haired woman entering the tent behind the Dark One. She was wearing a blood stained apron, her hair was disheveled, and her expressive eyes fraught with worry as she briefly curtseyed both men.

"The midwife sends me," she explained. "Congratulations, it's a girl, milord." Maurice's face fell, much to the sorcerer's astonishment. "Your presence would be urgently required, though," the young woman continued, "Milady is not well."

"Tell her I'm busy right now, but I'll see her later," the nobleman replied, gruffly dismissing her.

The woman was nervous in their presence, understandably, but the sorcerer noted something more in the way of outright fear in her stance as she lingered inappropriately, debating with herself inwardly. Then, she plucked up all her courage and decided to answer back. "Sire," she began cautiously, "With all due respect, the baby was born weeks too early, and your Lady may not…"

"Leave us," the Duke growled, startling her with his sheer, poignant indifference, and the Dark One's dislike for the cold-hearted young ruler grew by the minute.

The midwife's assistant dolefully bowed and silently slipped from of the tent. Rumpelstiltskin dipped his head and pictured the Duchess, a sixteen year old girl, to find out what was going on – out of simple curiosity. All he got was darkness. Her future had run out.

"Maybe you should take a moment to attend to your wife," he suggested. He was a lot of things, but not entirely heartless just yet, and he wasn't so much thinking of Maurice's peace of mind as considering the girl who was dying in childbed only yards from where they were standing. She'd been too soon married off for the sake of her father's fiefdom, and too soon bedded by the harsh lover her husband had been, and too soon abandoned by the lucky star her own mother had wished her wealth and happiness upon. "I'm not going anywhere today, and neither is this war."

But Maurice shook his head, eyes narrowing with indignation. "Not for a girl," he scoffed. "Now… back to business: you said you'd name your price."

The Dark One raised an eyebrow and weighed up his choices. He decisively revoked his initial thoughts on the subject. Actually having set his sights on something quite modest for his standards – a certain book on travelling realms, rumored to be in the possession of an unnerving Fairy Queen that was giving him a hard time in Avonlea – he opted to listen to the inner voice that was telling him there was something more important still. The Dark One was not on good terms with Blue. He never had been, and he never would be, but there would be time for all that later.

"My price…" he began slowly, leaning in towards the younger man, getting so close that the other could feel the sorcerer's breath on his cheek as he defiantly glanced into his serpentine, dark irises, "is that you will find it in you to love your daughter."

The Black Magician's voice reverberated within Maurice's shallow mind, capturing his will, and the Duke nodded compliantly, repeating, "I will love my daughter."

"You will give her everything she needs, and you will treat her with respect," the sorcerer went on, as he envisioned his Belle holding him, kissing him goodbye before he boarded the Jolly Roger. "You do not deserve the love of another woman and will not marry again," he informed Maurice, getting an image of Belle at his side on his castle walls on the eve of battle, wrapped in a warm cloak made of winterdragonskin. She was pregnant with his child. He remembered the night she'd conceived it, even though it hadn't happened yet, and wouldn't for almost another sixty years.

Grinning at the Duke, he added, "But you will give your daughter to me freely when I come for her – and I _will_ come for her."


	2. Darkness

_Darkness_, he thought, as the vision came to him, crippling his senses and bringing him to his knees with the sheer force of its ferocity. It was uncalled, and as badly-timed as it could possibly be, but he focused his attention on it because the darkness he perceived was all around the child. Panic arose within him, and Rumpelstiltskin cast one last wistful glance around the great inner hall of the síd, cursing his luck as headed back through the winding, dimly-lit tunnels to the entrance of the fairy-hill, growing in size with each step that he took back towards daylight.

It had taken the sorcerer years to find this place, and weeks to get Mint to bring him inside Blue's realm unnoticed. He was almost sure that this would _never_ happen again. Having promised the platinum-blonde, discontented and chronically depressed fairy freedom from her bindings in return for showing him where the book he was after was kept, he'd probably come as close to it today as he ever would.

A certain half-blood fae woman owed him a favor for brewing a special potion to cure her small son of an ailment that would have otherwise killed the boy. Unfortunately, the sickness was eating away at Mrs. Chapeau's intestines now instead of little Jefferson's. She'd never ask for the Dark One's help a second time, and certainly not for herself, the stubborn woman, so she probably wouldn't live long enough to pay her debt to him if he was delayed any further. Mrs. Chapeau had agreed to take Mint to Wonderland tonight if he was able to obtain the book with the fairy's help. He didn't even need his gift of foresight to tell him that this wasn't going to go according to plan.

Mint had been standing watch just outside the síd, and the Black Magician blinked his eyes at the sudden assault of bright daylight on them when he emerged from it, shooting all the way back up to his own full height and feeling slightly dazed afterwards.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" the fairy squeaked, anxiously shuffling about on her feet and kneading her fingers as she tried to read him.

"No," he replied curtly, raising a hand to shield his face. "But let me get back to you on that, dearie."

Not bothering to elaborate, Rumpelstiltskin disappeared without warning, leaving a slightly bewildered Mint behind to face her queen alone. She had no idea what to make of his sudden change of heart, or his hasty departure, but she was glad to be rid of his forbidding presence. Blue was on her way back, certainly sensing that something was off, and Mint realized that she probably couldn't talk her way out of this one. The nervous little fairy shrank back to her normal size and unfolded her wings to take flight. Better she wasn't anywhere around when Blue returned and picked up on the fine haze of dark magic that lingered in the air unpleasantly. She naïvely wondered whether her deal with the Dark One was still on, though he hadn't actually gotten what he'd come here for. Sincerely doubting it after a moment's consideration, she decided to find Tinkerbell and ask for some advice on where best to hide until this whole thing had blown over.

_Darkness_, the sorcerer thought to himself again, and he felt it deep inside, as he appeared within the walls of Avonlea Castle in the middle of a siege about to be ended by the opposing army's victory over what was left of Duke Maurice's guard. Soldiers from a foreign land were entering the inner courtyard almost unhindered through the main gate, clambering past the battering ram they'd used to shatter and break down the stronghold's last means of defense. Having done nothing but kill, rape and pillage during the last weeks, they had lost all inhibitions, and went about systematically ransacking the fortress, sparing no one that got in their way. The Dark One could no longer see Belle's face – only _darkness_.

He hoped he wasn't already too late as he made his way to the keep just ahead of the monster he knew so well. It was coming for the child, to destroy all hope - the last remaining ounce of what he still had left of it - and its name was _Death_. He'd brought it with him time and again to the places he went, enjoying its empowering company, stepping over the perishing and injured with the biting stench of destruction in his wake. On this occasion, however, his ancient companion would be surprised to find an adversary in him, although the sorcerer was very briefly and very agonizingly deliberating if perhaps he'd be upsetting a time-line he had no business interfering with by attempting to thwart fate here today. But then again, if fate itself didn't intended him to disturb the dust that was settling on predestination, why bother tooling him up to do so?

The midwife's fair assistant, who was actually a simple chambermaid with young children of her own, probably lying dead outside, met him literally head-on in the narrow stairwell that lead up to the Duke's private rooms. There was a baby wailing in her arms. One look at the infant told him it was Belle.

The maid's sweaty hair was plastered to her brow, and her pale, haggard face spoke volumes of the hardship she'd endured here during the last days. She'd thought to wrap the child in rags instead of the embroidered blankets that would have betrayed its noble descent to the raging men that were coming for Maurice's head at this minute.

"Where's the Duke?" the Black Magician snapped, grabbing her shoulders, though careful not to crush the child between them.

The chambermaid shook her head, tears spilling from her eyes. "I don't know," she sobbed, shaking uncontrollably. "He left a few hours ago."

Pure, irrepressible hate churned in his stomach and rose acidly in his throat. It wasn't aimed at the Duke – it was the bile loathing he reserved for himself. The Duke was… limited, an injudicious idiot who was hardly to be blamed for his lack of prudent counseling. No: This was his own doing, the sorcerer conceded. What a fool he'd been to leave her here, _his Belle_. His intuition had told him to, and his gut was so rarely wrong. Perhaps it hadn't been wrong at all, and there was a reason for this that was just beyond him right now. He didn't know, and realizing how pointless and dangerous it was to give in to his fury, he tried to calm his breathing and return his attention to the matter at hand.

The door to the keep went crashing back on its hinges with an ear-shattering bang then, and soldiers began pouring into the corridor below. Rumpelstiltskin had to make a decision. He could not take both the young woman and the child with him. The maid was already beyond listening to him; she was howling and hysterical at the sound of the men shuffling noisily up the stone steps towards them, brandishing swords and daggers, their armor clanging. She desperately pushed the baby into his arms, imploring him to take it, and clearing his conscience as she did so.

He was many things, but not entirely heartless towards the helpless, so he mumbled an enchantment that would buy the pretty maid a day or two to get herself to safety, if indeed she could gather her wits sufficiently, and turned her into a wren. The tiny bird elegantly spread its wings and flew out of the open arrow slit at his elbow.

The assassins were nearly upon him, and the Dark One turned fluidly on his heels, dipping his head briefly towards the three men that were climbing the worn treads behind him, just long enough for them to see his face clearly. They stopped abruptly, startled at his shocking appearance: grey, off-colored skin dusted with gold, and his sharp-featured, angular face with deep-set, unnatural serpentine eyes going black with pure murder as he fixed them to the hired slayers. Recognizing him for who and _what_ he was, they hastily stumbled backwards in an attempt to retreat, but instantly discovered that luck was not on their side, as they slammed into the bulk of the soldiers following them. Their efforts to save themselves sent a good dozen armed men toppling downwards, breaking bones that had miraculously survived weeks of close combat without fracturing, and falling into their own blades.

A cruel grin crept across the sorcerer's face as his ancient companion _Death_ rose to the occasion and claimed the odd bedraggled soul for himself, while rumors of the inseparable duo spread, causing some confusion and chaos in the courtyard. He didn't relish the smell of fear, but he welcomed it buying him some time as he debated on what to do next. Belle, who was perhaps six months old, stopped crying, and he glanced down at her. Her clear, blue eyes eventually settled on his face, and his remorseless expression automatically dismantled and relaxed into a softer version of his mien.

"So," he began quietly, drawing out the vowel, "Whatever am I going to do with _you_?"

As if to reply, the infant reached out a sticky, pudgy little hand to him and batted his cheek, drawing something in the way of a warm smile from him that prompted her to mirror it before long. He made his choice then, and drew a deep breath as he tucked her gently to his chest, cradling her head in his hand beneath his chin tenderly, and vanished.

Picturing the girl's father, he was determined to set things right in the only logical way he could think of. He still couldn't see Belle's future while he was actually holding her, and his irritated him. Only a day ago, he'd been able to envision her on the winterdragon's back, his arms wrapped securely around her middle as they soared above the village of his birth and his old cabin. But right now, when he closed his eyes, all he got was still _darkness_. So… _not_ taking her to Maurice had to be wrong in any case, he mused, as he reappeared in the forest next to the Duke, who almost wet himself with the fright he got.

"Forgotten a little something, have we, dearie?" the sorcerer growled in a dangerously low voice, detestation and disgust seeping through, peeling several layers off the nobleman's ego.

Maurice's mouth opened and closed repeatedly in forming a question that just wouldn't take shape in his head. The guards he'd taken along for his protection gaped and backed away from the Dark One slowly, wisely opting not to intervene. Rumpelstiltskin moved around the Duke sinuously, menacingly observing his prey and thoroughly reveling in terrorizing the man.

Then, he simply handed him the baby.

The Duke didn't understand at first, and awkwardly looked about for someone to take the child off his hands, but found himself quite alone with the problem of… _oh, his daughter_. He bit his lower lip, and red-hot shame claimed his entire face.

"I'm going to help you _one last time_," Rumpelstiltskin informed the confounded Duke of Currently Nothing after a seemingly endless silence, punctuation the last three words and baffling the nobleman even more.

"I'm going to take back Avonlea for you," the sorcerer explained, using simple words and speaking slowly, so as to engage the other man's attention span sufficiently. At the same time, he gratefully noted the soft murmur of the winterdragon's wings whispering in the air above him, but no one else did. _What took you so long?_ his mind told the winterdragon off, reaping a rumbling reply that could have been mistaken for thunder in the distance.

"I expect you to find some wench to feed this child while I'm doing that," he continued, speaking to Maurice, and motioning a finger at the baby. "When I come back, _you_ will have thought of fifty ways or more to manage your affairs and keep them in order for the next, say, thirty years."

Maurice exhaled, making a small sound of relief that had the character of a chuckle as his lips curved upwards in gratitude, and his shoulders slumped forward. When the sorcerer's eyes narrowed severely at this laps of countenance, he straightened again with a start, consciously working to wipe the involuntary smile off his face as he gently bounced the little girl on his arm.

The Dark One took another step towards the Duke, far too close for comfort, and tilted his head to one side, as he gazed into the other man's eyes. The lapels of his leather coat brushed Belle's face lightly, but she didn't complain, whereas her father trembled with fear.

"If I come back and find _anything_ dissatisfying about your assertions," he breathed, "I will skin you alive before I tear you apart and hang what's left out in the sun for the vultures to pick apart _slowly_, while I watch."

Good thing that Belle would never remember this day, Rumpelstiltskin thought, as he mounted the winterdragon in a clearing not far from where he'd left her a few minutes later. He patted his friend's neck affectionately as they ascended gracefully into the sky. Closing his eyes for a moment, he discovered that the _darkness_ was gone: He saw his wife very clearly, as she turned sleepily in his arms in their bed sixty years from now, molding her body to his as she kissed him the morning before she died.


	3. Blood

_**Author's Notes: Thank you everyone who is following and favorited - love that you are enjoying this! Thank you also to my wonderful reviewers for encouragement and feedback: darkonesroses, Twyla Mercedes, dullhouse, cynicsquest, emospritelet, CJ Moliere, LynRward and belle**_

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3. Blood

_Blood_: still warm, still fresh, and it was everywhere. The spinner had never intended to become what he had, but he was lost in and to what he was, and it was too late to turn back. The Dark One had no delusions about the state of his heart: it was black, and with every life he took on every battlefield he agreed to pick a side upon, another piece of it withered and died. There was no redemption for the likes of him, but he wasn't asking for forgiveness for the things he'd done anymore.

The blood of every sort of man he'd killed was everywhere on him: on his face, in his hair, on his hands and on his clothes. Experienced, skillful warriors with no attachments, no boundaries and nothing to lose had fought him with great ferocity, but they'd generally met their end without much fuss when their time had come. Simple farmers who'd been in this particular battle involuntarily when they should have been working their fields had proved less resilient but easier to handle than the mercenaries, while newlywed husbands with young families in their prayers had been on their knees, begging for their lives. He'd been quick and merciful in dealing with them, just as he had with the boy-soldiers who'd not been much older than his own son when he'd lost him.

All of what they'd had in common was that they'd lost a lot of blood when they'd met their end. The coppery, earthy smell of it was ever present in his nose; its dry, powdery residue clinging to his skin where it had congealed. It was reliably always the same, and it had become so familiar that it was almost comforting in a sense. Blood was the only substance he couldn't get off of himself by the use of magic, as though it was a constant substantiation of evidence for what he was and what he would always be, lest he ever forget. The Dark One's deeds were written in blood, but his own personal hell wasn't the carnage he'd brought about in Avonlea Castle or any other place he'd chosen to wield his powers.

It was the overwhelming emptiness in the aftermath of _all that_ _blood_.

What was different this time, however, was that he hadn't been able to locate the commanding officer of the army he'd set about wiping out – or any officer at all, for that matter. The Black Magician had been extremely insistent and selective of his methods in truth-finding, as always, but the fact that really _no one_ had seemed to know for whom they were actually fighting, much less whose mind-child this particularly memorable little waste of human resources had been was a bit unsettling. He'd yet to look into that in more detail, but for now, he was done here, and it was time to leave this site of destruction.

The winterdragon carried him away from the slaughter he'd brought here on silent wings. Once the sorcerer had made sure that Duke Idiot had safely bundled up his infant daughter and was well on his way to reclaim whatever was left of his inheritance – with some rather extensive mopping and cleaning ahead of him, no doubt – he took course for home.

He could have chosen to use magic to travel the distance, but the dragon had become part of a fierce, ritualized mastery-mechanism that helped keep him sane when the emptiness began to take hold.

The magnificent creature was born of fire and wisdom, and he didn't judge, nor did he question the magician's motives. There was a devout understanding between the two: the Dark One would always protect the winterdragon and guard the rare surviving remnants of his species from any sword seeking for glory, and in return, the dragon lent Rumpelstiltskin a tiny share of his Light in the form of uncompromising friendship and sanctuary in dangerous times like these...

In the aftermath, and with the emptiness that ensued…

This diminutive, yet imperative portion of balance would allow for the man that the sorcerer had once been to resurface from the depths of his consuming darkness just long enough to preserve the last quantum share of humanity that the Dark One still carried inside his black, but beating heart. Though the dragon knew that this might not be nearly enough to permanently conserve his lucidity with things as they were, he would never abandon Rumpelstiltskin – not as long as he could still feel the spinner's innermost being in the Dark One's _blood_.

Slouching over to take the strain off his empty, cramping stomach, the sorcerer ran a crimson-stained hand over his cheeks and chin, smearing the blood as he settled down for the ride. He tried to remember just why he'd gone and interfered with destiny once again, obliterating an entire generation of men from some far away fiefdom in the process. The reason came to mind quite easily after a moment's sifting and sorting of thoughts for some anchor in the murder-induced fog.

Eventually, his sentience returned, his inner perception cleared, and saw Belle as though she was there with him, nimbly turning to face him within the circle of his arms on the back of the winterdragon. She put her hands on his hips and gazed into his eyes, as if she was real and could see into his soul, astounding him in that she wasn't horrified by what she found there. He became aware of her warm breath on his filthy face as he took in the scent of her hair over the metallic taste of the blood in his mouth. She drew closer, fitting to him perfectly, and he felt the soft, healing touch of her palms on his cheeks just before her lips gently brushed his mouth, kissing the corers of it. He sensed her weight against him when he reciprocated the intimacy of her embrace and touched his forehead to hers, cupping her face in his hands and then running his fingers through her hair. The illusion was so tangible that the young woman in his arms actually seemed to _take up space_, and he appreciated the presence of her semblance beyond measure, though he kept telling himself she was pure imagination. She was nothing but a dream of some future that might or might not happen, in the end.

Then, she was gone again, leaving behind emptiness.

He was certain that Belle was a piece of the big picture, a fragment of the puzzle he was trying to assemble one fragment at a time, even if he didn't understand her connection to it yet. She was important, somehow, and… the more often he saw her, the more important she became. He closed his eyes and tried to capture another image of her as the winterdragon coursed through the night.

Scarlett, beating heart, pure and unblemished... She was so close, he could hear it pounding against her chest.

They were standing on the battlements of the Dark Castle's outer walls once more. She was reaching out to a boy that remotely resembled him at a younger age; he had dark brown hair, the beginnings of a prominent nose, and was in his early teens. The boy wasn't really there, of course – but then again, none of them were. The sorcerer could see that the teenager was an apparition within his vision, caught between this world and another, but what got his attention was that the lad was trying to cross realms.

His name was Henry – and Belle was talking to him to keep him from fading back to wherever it was he came from. He felt the boy's fear and confusion, and glancing at Belle, he knew that she could, too. Watching himself crouch down beside her on the guards' walkway in front of the translucent shape of the boy, he took note of the fact that it was winter where, no _when_ they were. It was snowing heavily.

There were armed soldiers and archers with their bows at the ready around them on the machicolations to both sides, facing an army that was closing in on the castle from the woods beyond the meadow. He heard someone barking the command for them to take aim, observed the archers do so, and when the young blond man to his left yelled "fire", the clunk of sixty or more sinews being released tore through the atmosphere. It was instantly followed by the eerie, high-pitched whine of arrows shooting though the air, and a sickening, multi-layered thud, when the iron tips pelted down on their targets, meeting human flesh. Obviously, all hell was about to break loose here, but, to the sorcerer's amazement, he saw a different version of himself and Belle giving the boy their undivided attention in the middle of this, nonetheless...

_Henry_… he told himself over and over again to remember the name. _Henry_… _Henry_ had to be another piece of the puzzle, then. The boy wasn't his, he was someway sure, and he wasn't Belle's either, probably, but he was just as important as she was.

Rumpelstiltskin saw himself looking down at his other self's hands. They were scorched and searing with pain from touching Henry, and he couldn't heal them, for some reason. It was then that he was startled to discover that he wasn't in possession of that kind of magic anymore.

Belle was, however.

A golden haze formed around her as she fixed her eyes to the boy's, her hands grasping his shoulders. Microscopic, swirling particles of magic emanated from her in great amounts, enshrouding her in a buttery, warm-glowing mist that fascinated him as he looked on. It was just as mesmerizing as it was bewildering and frightening.

The awareness of his own helplessness struck him with unexpected force, and it almost knocked Rumpelstiltskin off the dragon's back when the image of Belle dematerializing along with the boy waned to nothingness, leaving him behind with nothing but emptiness, even then.

The Dark One bared his teeth and shook his head in trying to regain himself and banish what he'd just witnessed. So… not only would she break his curse, she would have his magic.

He tried to calm his inner turmoil and put things into proportion but had a hard time with that. This cast a whole new light on matters… did he really want to know all of it? He wasn't sure if he did. Even the castle had suddenly gained a very different perspective, when he thought of what it might trigger upon his return, and he needed to think about this before he made up his mind.

Taking another detour to prolong their journey, he decided that perhaps a distraction would do him some good along the way. There was some unfinished business that needed tending to in any case, so he bade the dragon to take him to a place he'd last visited some time ago with the purpose of checking on an endangered investment.

Anam set the sorcerer down by his old house in the village of his birth. People tended to scatter once they recognized him, when they were done staring at the dragon in mortal agony, and this time was no different. A half a dozen impoverished souls made for the woods, and another ten or twelve vanished in their hovels as he slid off his mount's back.

This was the last place he'd expected to see her, but when he looked up, there she was again.

Belle faced around to him in the doorway of the cabin he'd built for Milah – how very strange, he thought to himself… but there she was, her cloak swirling about her as snowflakes danced through the air all around them. Her smile made him shudder with pure… what? He wasn't sure. _So beautiful_, he mused for the hundredth time, even, but perhaps _because_ she was a complete mystery to him. She reached out her hand to him, and was tempted to take it. He almost did, but she was only the image of a woman who might or might not reach out to him sixty years from now, monster that he was, he told himself, and with that insight, she was gone.

He unenthusiastically turned and walked away from his cabin with the intention of seeking out the lowly shelter of the half-fairy he'd struck a deal with about taking Mint to Wonderland. She'd been very ill when he'd last seen her some time ago, and perhaps in the meantime her suffering had changed her mind about negotiating another bargain with him to save herself. He was just about to knock on the rotting door of Chapeau's tumble-down hovel, when he found himself confronted with the lingering, shapeless aura of his ancient companion _Death_. Knowing that he'd been beaten to it, he stood quietly for a moment, weighing his options. Evidently, he'd have to think of some other way to obtain the book.

Feeling spent and weary, he finally backed away and almost fell over a little boy who was running towards the hut, the village healer in his wake.

_Too late_, the sorcerer told the healer with a deploring glance and a shrug, while the boy picked himself up off the ground, still hopeful. The elderly man slowed his pace and waited for the Dark One to vacate the porch so he could pass into the hovel with some distance between them.

"Wait with me for a moment, young man," the Dark One ordered the boy, as the healer edged around him and entered the house.

"My mother's really sick," the lad explained, all in a fluster, though reluctantly obeying, while his eyes did not leave the healer's back as the older man disappeared into the gloom of the only room Jefferson had ever known for a home.

"I know," Rumpelstiltskin commiserated, as the reek of demise reached his nostrils. He placed a hand on the boy's shoulder with no other goal than to offer a small amount of comfort, acknowledging that losing a parent was one of the hardest experiences a child would ever have to cope with.

"Do you know my mother?" Jefferson inquired, his brow furrowing, and the sorcerer nodded, wide-eyed and placing the other hand on the youngster's cheek as a jolt of realization jerked through his entire body. He crouched down and fixed his gaze intently to the boy's: direct contact exponentiated the imagery, and what he was getting was priceless when he looked into the Hatter's mind and future.


	4. Fear

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4. Fear

_Fear_ had always been a part of him. He'd either felt it himself or spread it amongst others for all the years of his long life. Being on the receiving end of it for the first thirty-five of them that he'd spent in daily terror of the things he'd been powerless to change hadn't been much fun. However, the experience had certainly served as an infinite source of inspiration for the two-hundred and forty that followed, and had seen him in the position to change whatever he pleased about himself and his environment.

_Fear_ had something oddly fascinating, and it was still highly entertaining to watch how each and every mortal's behavior would follow a similar pattern when faced with it. Kings reacted to it in the exact same, predicable manner as beggars did, when it reached its climax. Usually, there was a lot of whining and groveling involved, but, when evoked sagaciously, there was nothing like a little _fear_ to prompt reverence and sincerity, making all men equal in that respect.

_Fear_ was what the Dark One saw in the young dwarf's eyes before he'd even got started on him, though he had the strangest feeling that he wasn't necessarily the cause of it. He would have liked to be, since the little man's _fear of_ _someone else_ wouldn't be much use to him.

Wondering who this _someone else_ might be, the sorcerer unhurriedly pulled up a stool and seated himself opposite the dwarf in the dank, moldy dungeon cell. The next hour or so would demonstrate that _nobody_ knew how to work _fear_ better than Rumpelstiltskin.

Plucky, miner by vocation, was shackled to the wall and watched the Black Magician's every move with growing apprehension and dread, but remained quiet, trembling uncontrollably. The sour stench of sweat and the biting reek of urine drying on his soiled clothes and in the old straw on the stone floor beneath him was stifling on the second full day of his captivity in the bowels of the Dark Castle, though the sorcerer didn't seem bothered by it. The dwarf could hardly keep himself upright anymore, not having slept or had water since he'd been brought here and left to himself in the gloom. His arms were numb to the shoulder blades, and his back felt as though it was broken in several places from the position he'd been forced into by the chains that held him.

The sorcerer calmly rolled up the right sleeve of the black silk shirt he was wearing, taking great care to fold the creases back on themselves neatly, and checking meticulously that they were straight and exactly the same width every time. He leisurely repeated the same procedure on the other one as the dwarf watched on. After that, he made a point of taking off his signet ring and pocketing it, and Plucky's eyes grew wide with terror.

The miner knew why he was here, and he doubted that he'd be leaving in one piece unless he told the sorcerer what he wanted to know. If he did, the Dark One might let him live, but he was sure that he wouldn't get very far when _she_ found out…

He was dead, one way or the other.

The Dark One couldn't see into the dwarf's thoughts because he couldn't look into the minds of magical creatures unless they permitted it, but he certainly felt that Plucky's _pluckiness_ had just about deserted him. This day would finally get him somewhere with what had been troubling him for over a year now: the inexplicable lack of information concerning the siege on Avonlea.

He'd recently come to the conclusion that the carnage he'd been forced to involve himself with hadn't been about the dukedom as such at all. Some warlord would have been inclined to boast, or forced to accept responsibility for it sooner or later, had this been about politics or greed. This wasn't the case, though, because not even the king's advisor had been knowledgeable of the infantry on the move across the lands right under his very nose.

There were two other plausible explanations: Either, someone wanted _Avonlea_ destroyed for personal reasons, or someone wanted _someone else in Avonlea_ destroyed for personal reasons. Both were feasible to the sorcerer's mind, but also prompted additional questions: _who on earth_ would have been interested in destroying Avonlea, poor as it was, and of so little strategic value to any of the surrounding fiefdoms? There were no ports, no trading routes, and no mentionable mineral deposits in the bare, depressing mountain range that enclosed it from the north. Not even fairy dust resources - just some ogres and plenty of trolls. Did anyone outside Maurice's marginal jurisdiction really even know it was there? Highly unlikely, he thought, which inclined him to lean more towards his secondary assumption. It was equally unbelievable that someone might stage a siege of this expenditure for the sake of targeting _one_ person, but then again, who was _he_ to say? He could well appreciate that personal ambition or vengeance could be very impelling for numerous reasons. But… if the bloodbath he'd participated in had indeed been rooted in something personal, then _who _would be _this important _to_ whom?_ And _why?_

In his experience, the truth always wanted out, one way or the other, and human garrulity was generally the most reliable source of information. Patience and good informants in the right places usually brought about fairly decent results without having to get his hands dirty. However, this time was different. Although you'd think that the human soldiers, archers, farmers, smiths, carpenters, boys and whoever else had devastated Avonlea and lost their lives as a consequence would have been mourned by wives, sisters, cousins or friends, no one had come to claim their bodies. There had never been the least whisper of a notion as to their origin or their warlord's identity in the past year. An army didn't just fall from the sky, but no one would even admit to having seen it coming. Not until a few days ago, when a dwarf named for his courage had been the cause of some gossip at a tavern not far from Avonlea, where a little wren had recognized his bearded face.

The little wren had summoned Rumpelstiltskin in the way that he'd taught her, and he'd rewarded her generously with a duplicate of the golden locket he'd already made for the girl she was helping the Duke raise. Both she and Belle were now well protected by the enchantments he'd placed upon the identical necklaces – a spell that would make them invisible to anyone meaning them harm. Just in case.

He could sense that the dwarf was wishing _he_ was invisible right now, because the fact that the Dark One definitely meant him harm would have come to his attention by now. He bent down and picked up a small, rolled leather instrument satchel containing his favorite collection of truth-finding tools, since gentle persuasion didn't seem to be doing the trick. Making sure that Plucky had a good view of him, he set about undoing the strap fastenings and languidly unraveled the satchel, running a hand almost tenderly over the implements of pain that were carefully aligned and stored inside like the scissors and files of a manicure set.

"What are you going to do with me?" the short, burly man asked, his voice wavering as he strained pathetically against his shackles.

The Dark One rolled his eyes, sighing. _Really?_ he thought. _Dwarves could be so_ _dense_…

He took a scalpel from the satchel and frowned as he held it up to inspect a heavy tarnish that had settled on its blade. Making a distinct noise of displeasure, he pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his waistcoat and began cleaning it while the dwarf watched on, eyes growing wider still.

Going through the motions of his unsettling little presentation – as he just had – normally sufficed to generate a substantial amount of both awareness _and_ fear in anyone chained to the walls of his little chamber of horrors. The mere sight of the assorted steel devices would be enough to spark any imagination, even that of a dwarf. He wasn't fond of making a mess that he'd have to go to the trouble of cleaning up later, and had actually hoped to spare himself that today. Though the Black Magician was quite renowned for his uncompromising ruthlessness and cruelty, and the character of his wrongdoings occupied the nightmares and dreamscapes of every child that was ever put to bed at night in the Enchanted World, his reputation had definitely outgrown him by several sizes in the last hundred years or so. Perhaps he was getting soft.

When he was done cleaning the blade, Rumpelstiltskin rose to his feet and tipped it in Plucky's direction off-handedly.

"Did you realize that a man can bleed from shallow skin lesions _for days _before he dies?" he queried, playfully balancing the scalpel between his index fingers as two rats appeared at his feet. "I wonder how long a dwarf would last…" he smiled pleasantly, looking down, "with these little fellows nibbling away at him."

"Please," Plucky begged, thoroughly terrified, sweat streaming down his face and the furrow of his back, "Please, just tell me what you want to know... I'll tell you everything."

A slow smile spread over the sorcerer's face as he casually clasped his hands behind his back. "That's more like it," he declared merrily, stalking back and forth in front of the dwarf and rolling the helve of the scalpel between his fingers. "I'm sure you will... Now, I've been wondering: what would a dwarf like yourself have been doing in Avonlea the night before the siege?"

Plucky's brow crinkled, and he tried to avoid looking at the sorcerer while considered a moment too long before replying. "What siege would that be…?"

The Dark One's eyebrow twitched as his integral rubbish-detector went off. He stopped abruptly right in front of the dwarf and leaned in to him much too closely, fixing his unnaturally large serpentine eyes to Plucky's.

"The one where I killed every last man trying to take the castle," he informed him sharply through his teeth, still smiling, though anything but pleasantly.

Plucky dropped his gaze to the floor miserably, and opted for a other, probably less painful death than the one he was about to be dealt if he didn't talk now. "I was helping round up the trolls," he confessed, his voice barely above a whisper.

_"Round up the trolls?"_ the sorcerer replied incredulously. _This was bound to be good._

"Yes. We were all there… for Blue," the dwarf continued, and the sorcerer's breath caught. "We helped bring them forth, and she cast a spell that made them look like men."

Slowly, things began to fall into place for the Dark One. _Blue… an army of trolls in the guise of men…_

"To what purpose?" he inquired, squeezing the blade in the palm of his hand until it drew thick, dark blood.

The dwarf dared not look up and swallowed hard, weighing his chances. There were not good. "To destroy Avonlea and kill the girl," he went on, his speech starting to slur. "The Duke's daughter… she's _one of the Four_."

"The _four_ _what_?" the Black Magician spat, barely able to contain himself.

"Four riders," the dwarf told him, finally raising his eyes to the sorcerer's dark, murderous pits of hate. "There's a prophesy, but I don't know all of it… that's really all I know, I swear! That's all she told us – "

The dwarf yelped and screamed in agony as the Dark One unleashed his fury, thrashing and struggling against the chains that held him with all he had left when the blade swished across his face and neck, cutting, gashing, slicing through the skin, right to the bone.

Then, suddenly, _she_ was there with him again, whispering in his ear. The sorcerer could hear Belle's voice very clearly above the biting, snarling rage that had taken hold of him. It was telling him firmly to stop, and strangely, he did. He had no idea why, but he did. Her hand was resting on his shoulder, and he could feel the warmth of her skin through the fabric of his shirt, calming him, reminding him of the man he'd once been. The man worthy of a gentle hand.

"Rumple, don't do this," she told him, "You're better than this…" For the first time, he took note of the way she said his name. _Rumple_, she always called him... It had the sound of something creased and slightly disheveled; a broken toy, perhaps...

He wiped at the gore that had splattered on his face and lips with the back of his hand, smearing it, and spat out what had gotten in his mouth. The dwarf, who was bleeding profusely from his wounds, hung loosely by the arms from his shackles, whimpering as the crimson life of him seeped out into the straw below, draining him. The sorcerer felt no remorse.

He merely sensed _her_ touch, aware that _she_ was watching him, but he had no idea what she expected of him, monster that he was. Raising his gaze to hers, he realized once again that she was only the image of some possible future; a vision of someone who _would_, or _would not_ love him one day - someone who _would_, or _would not fear_ him. Whatever was she thinking, when she looked at him?


	5. Loneliness

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5. Loneliness

_Loneliness,_ he thought to himself when he saw her in his mind, was not what he'd wished upon, or intended for the beautiful Lady of Avonlea. He'd have assumed that a delightful and stunning young woman such as she would have sought the company of her peers and set about entertaining an endless entourage of friends at an endless succession of dinners and balls, chatting and laughing, dancing and enjoying her youth and the amenities of life at her father's court. It was strange to find that she didn't. She was used to slipping away into _loneliness_.

He got images of Belle at Avonlea Castle from time to time, and this was one of those times. Unfitting, as always, because he was in the middle of striking, or rather _refusing_ a deal, but always welcome nonetheless. It was comforting and oddly reassuring to know she was still there; his connection to her worked even when she wasn't currently in danger. She was blissfully unaware of the fact that she was the only one who could take away some of the _emptiness_ that had been eating away at him, devouring him more than ever recently, though his ultimate goal was almost within his grasp now.

He kept as far away from her as he could, but it was getting harder and harder. Knowing full well that it wouldn't be smart to run the risk of changing the future as he had seen it – to risk changing _her_ as he'd seen her, he had to remain unseen. She'd never met the Dark One, and she didn't really know he existed beyond the scare-tales and rumors, because no one in Avonlea would speak to her of him. Not even the little wren, since she had been taken by his old companion, _Death_, ten winters ago, when she'd had the misfortune to continue in the sad tradition of women who were unwitting enough to let the Duke bed them: she'd died giving birth to an illegitimate son who'd followed her a day later and was put to rest in her arms in the small church yard outside the castle grounds.

That was when Belle had started to feel the loneliness and make herself unseen_._

Although she knew nothing of Rumpelstiltskin since he'd never actually spoken to her in the flesh, he had the strangest feeling that he knew _her_. He couldn't look into her mind, but he could feel her inside _his_ mind _all the time_. She was a part of the mystery he'd been trying to solve, and she would be relevant to his cause, but there was something else about her that he couldn't explain to himself rationally… something just as important to him as the sum of whatever else he was doing.

With every year that passed, and with every vision he had of her, he grew more… _attached_ to her, somehow _inured_ to her appearing in his thoughts and confusing them. She was his by destiny, but he couldn't say that he'd come to fully understand this part of it yet. Why had fate chosen _her_?

She was almost a woman now, and he'd discovered that not only was she beautiful, but also very clever and quick-witted. One of those things, let alone the combination of the two, made the mere notion that she could ever feel anything but repulsion for him seem quite absurd, and he often considered the possibility that _Destiny_ might be trying to mislead him. _Still_… she was not just significant to the conceptual engineering of his future in the way that he wanted to shape it for himself; she was personally and vitally valuable to the man he'd once been – and might be again. He didn't _want_ for her to be lonely and unseen.

Belle was seventeen now. That she'd reached seventeen was nothing short of a miracle. He'd been very busy keeping her alive, though she'd never guess how close she'd been to death, and how close he'd been to her, whenever necessary in these past seventeen years. Blue had gone to great lengths in her attempts to take Belle's life during this time, and he'd had to go to equally great lengths to preserve it.

It wasn't for lack of interest that he couldn't seem to rid this world of Blue and be done with the matter; heaven knew he'd tried, but he'd always been _one _step behind, _one _moment too late, and the Fairy Queen had developed an uncanny knack for evading him.

_Oh, the things he'd like to do to that fairy before he skinned her alive, if he ever got a hold of her.._.

Belle didn't have the slightest idea of how often he'd stood _next to_ her, _in front of_ her, _behind_ her, right _over_ her, _watching_ her, watching_ over _her, _protecting her_ from Blue and the men, women, creatures, ghouls and spirits she'd sent for her.

He was sorry that she was lonely tonight, but there was nothing he could do for her, a mere ghost at her side in the library Maurice had built for her in his castle. There was a lost look of longing about her in the waning light of a summer's day spent planning the first of many balls and banquettes to be held in her honor. She was of age now by most standards, and the sorcerer had known that the day would come when Maurice would be anxious to get her engaged to some reasonably decent man that he deemed suitable to her standing.

The Dark Seer's visions had revealed to him that she wasn't about to marry anyone just yet, though, and he found that quite intriguing. No matter how hard the Duke tried to convince her that this was the way of the world, and the way things were done, Rumpelstiltskin could read her well enough to realize that this was not what she wanted for herself. She wouldn't even think of it for another forty-three years, if his arithmetic was correct, but he wasn't altogether sure if her father would approve of her choice of husband then.

He'd seen his future_ altered _self kneeling before her in that strange _otherworld _that occupied his dreams, forty-three years from now, and slip a ring of intricately interwoven golden threads on her finger. It was a ring he'd made – or was _yet to make_ – for her himself. The man he'd _yet to become_ looked up at her beautiful face, and she smiled at him, fixing her gaze to his as she repeated the vows he'd made to her. His future self would claim Belle for his own and promise her _forever_. He'd kissed the woman she was yet to become tenderly, deeply, and it was the most vivid and treasured memory of the future that he possessed. It banished _h i s loneliness,_ and even his _darkness_ as he walked beside her from one bookshelf to the other in Avonlea,_ unseen._

The Duke's collection of books wasn't very big, and Belle had read every one of them twice already, but she didn't mind rereading a story several times if she'd enjoyed it. Doing so was like visiting an old friend and had something warming, something comforting; it gave her a sense of belonging for a while. He knew that feeling well, because it was what he felt whenever he was with her, _unseen_ though he would remain.

Absorbed in thought, she took her time in picking out one of the worn leather-backed tomes from the shelf was looking at. He noted that she decided on one that he'd sent her for her last birthday. She sat on the broad, cushioned window sill of one of four tall, arcading windows with a view of the setting sun to the west, and opened it at the first page. Absently, she ran her fingers over the neatly penned inscription inside:

_For the beautiful Lady of Avonlea on her seventeenth birthday._

_May the dreams you hold dearest_

_Be those which come true._

_– R._

She smiled as she studied the dedication, wondering who _R._ might be. He sat down on the floor across from her in tailor-fashion and watched her facial expression change as she began reading the prologue by the light of the oil lamp at her side. He wanted to stay with her, unseen, for as long as he possibly could, but she hadn't even turned the page before he felt himself fading back to his own reality.

The Dark One set the goblet from which he'd been sipping his wine down on the table and smiled wryly at the king in beggars' clothes seated opposite him. Reclining in his chair, his fingers tented, he couldn't help but wonder at this curios choice of locality, since the tavern Midas had named for their meeting tonight was as loud and as busy as they came. The nobleman was plainly ill at ease. There was vulgar talk and noisy drunken bragging all around them, filthy jokes followed by lurid laughter, games of dice and cards, and sloppy spillages followed by more laughter. A brawl was just starting somewhere at the far end of the barroom, and Rumpelstiltskin was instantly and fully back to the here and now.

"What say you?" Midas asked conspiratorially, trying to sound more confident than he was. "Can we do business?"

"I don't know that you'd have anything to offer me in return for what you ask," the Black Magician replied smugly, testing the other man's wit. "If I was to see to it that the princess engaged to James was to have an unfortunate, fatal accident, so that poor George would send his grieving son to that little auction of yours – "

"_Ball!_" the nobleman indignantly interjected, "It's a _ball_ held in honor of my daughter!" His temper was flaring, as it always did when someone seemed dissenting of his take on things. "You make it sound as though I'm selling off my only child."

"A spade is a spade," Rumpelstiltskin sneered, baring discolored teeth disdainfully at the heaving man. He just loved to mock the local royalty. "_Your kind_ does that sort of…" his fingers fluttered through the air as he searched for the right word and found none, "_thing_." Leaning forward, he added pointedly, "Apart from that, I don't murder little girls. It's bad style."

"_How dare you?_" Midas bellowed, almost frothing at the mouth, his jaw set as he rose to his feet and slammed the heels of his palms down on the table.

The brawl in the back stopped momentarily, and people began staring at him, wondering if the scene unfolding in the darkest corner of the dinky, disreputable inn might yet prove a tad more entertaining than the weekly occurring fight amongst the discontented field laborers and bondsmen they'd become accustomed to. When Midas realized he was making a spectacle of himself, he quickly seated himself again, pulling his hood down over his brow. The last thing he needed was to be recognized here tonight in the company he was keeping. How on earth had he let _her_ talk him into this? He didn't know what was in it for Blue, but he could only hope that this whole thing wouldn't end in misery for him. _  
_

"You don't know what you're talking about," he stated dryly, barely audible as things went back to what could be considered normal here around them. "I'm not _selling off_ my daughter," he insisted, completely ignorant to the point Rumpelstiltskin had actually been getting at. "I love Abigail dearly, and I'm just making sure she'll get someone who's deserving of her. I've been advised that James would make a perfect match." He took a drink of his ale, swallowing the bitter brew too fast, and almost choked.

The Dark One quirked an eyebrow at him and wished that he had, impressed yet again by this particular king's very individual perception of the world and his complete lack of ethics. He decided to set aside his astonishing and unexpected tweak of conscience, however, and let his curiosity overrule his better judgment.

"And who would have advised you on such a thing?" he inquired, genuinely interested to know. "Why _James_, if I may ask?"

He nurtured a seldom-felt dislike for both George and the boy he'd placed with him as an infant, and he'd not condemn the pale, dark-haired girl Leopold lovingly called Snow to death for something she'd never had a say in in the first place. It seemed… wrong, and he knew that it would bother him to harm Eva's daughter, for some reason.

Midas didn't know how to answer right away. He really didn't feel like telling Rumpelstiltskin that the Blue Fairy had suggested this. It was generally known that the Dark One wasn't on good terms with her. She was the one who'd pointed out the benefits of an alliance with George that would far outweigh the sentimental values of the bond his wife had shared with the deceased queen. The only thing she asked of him in return for her counsel was that he would arrange to meet with the sorcerer in this _specific_ tavern tonight to discuss the untimely demise of Snow White, which would considerably even the path to his aim.

"Strategy," the king finally replied decisively, looking him firmly in the eye.

The Dark One could find no untruth in that, but was overall dissatisfied all the same. This was one deal he was definitely inclined to refuse. "Sorry," he told the Golden King curtly, fingers splaying on the table, "You're on your own."

Rumpelstiltskin was about to empty his goblet and leave, but was abruptly beset by another image that imposed itself on his mind, causing him to push back his chair just in time to avoid having his wine spilled when the brawl got out of hand. An aging dwarf named Plucky, who boasted some handsome scars he was telling the girls he'd gotten during the siege of Avonlea, came crashing down hard on his back on the table between the two men. Midas' ale spilled all over him as the pitcher went flying. The dwarf snorted back some blood and snot and spat it on the floor, just missing the king's foot.

"Get a grip, man!" the sorcerer growled, and the bleeding, battered miner's heart missed a beat as he pushed himself up on his elbows, eyes widening in horror when he recognized the Dark One. He hastily lunged for the door, almost knocking down the Blue Fairy as he went. She was as yet unnoticed by the sorcerer, whose perception of fairy magic seldom failed to set off a whole orchestra of alarm bells in his head, but he was currently busy with another ill-timed vision of the young Lady of Avonlea.

Belle was still sitting with her knees pulled up on a window sill in her father's library, but the Dark One had the distinct feeling that something was off the moment he found himself there with her. She wasn't reading the book in her lap anymore; she was staring out at the star-filled sky, her temple resting against the cool glass of the windowpane. It was there in the glass that he saw the reflection of the assassin Blue had managed to get into the castle to take care of one her biggest problems.

The Fairy Queen was wearing her human form as she lingered briefly in the doorway of the tavern, glaring at him. She had disguised her semblance with the dark, coarse hooded cloak of a peasant. The squid-ink in the flagon she was hiding in the palm of her hand would bind the Black Magician long enough to keep him from preventing what was about to happen at Avonlea Castle for sure this time. He'd get to watch Belle burn, at best. The Fairy Queen swiftly crossed the floor, uncorking the small bottle nimbly with the tip of her thumb and tossed its contents at his back… into thin air, as he vanished right in front of her.

Rumpelstiltskin reappeared in the library a few seconds after the heavy doors leading out into the wide fourth-floor corridor had been closed and locked from the outside. Several incendiary bombs had been tossed into the room, spreading surprising amounts of a fuming, burning liquid as they rolled across the wooden parquet floor. The death-bringing flames quickly and efficiently lit up everything that got in their way, before Belle even realized what was going on. She'd jumped up when she'd heard the commotion, but she was too late. The fire was spreading on the wooden floorboards and devouring the soft, deep-pile rugs, licking at the shelves, and working its way towards her with the staggering speed of the magic that was powering it. Thick, black smoke filled the room, and the heat was unbearable. She glanced at the windows that were simply too high from the ground for a hearty leap, and she knew she was trapped. Coughing and wheezing, she covered her mouth and nose with a corner of her shawl to buy herself some time, but her head was rapidly growing heavy with the gases she inhaled, and her knees went out from under her as the lost consciousness.

The Dark One swept her up in his arms before she hit the floor and tried to teleport them out of the blazing inferno. His mouth fell open when he found that he couldn't, and his eyes darted about indeterminately in disbelief. He could take any consenting human being with him to any place that he chose, but he was shocked to discover that she was _not human, _and his options were running out.

Turning to the window, he tucked her head in the hollow between his shoulder and his neck, cradling it in his hand, and hugged her to him tightly. He took what little run-up he could, and braced himself for the impact as he pitched himself through the glass. It shattered into a thousand pieces with the force of his velocity, and a burst of flames followed them outside, reaching for them with greedy arms as they plunged downwards towards the ground.

The sorcerer tried to shield Belle with his body and took the full blow of the fall upon himself, not fearing physical pain, since he couldn't feel it. His skin and bones mended the instant they were broken when his back connected with the stone pavement below the window. He was immortal, but whatever else she might be, _she_ _wasn't_.

She lay sprawled across his middle, and her body was damaged in so many places, he hardly knew where to start healing her. Raising himself into a sitting position, he gathered her into his arms again. The purple haze that sometimes emanated from his magic engulfed them, and he rocked her back and forth gently, whispering in her ear. It seemed like an eternity before she finally opened her eyes and looked up into his face, the sound of his voice in her mind. He felt a profound sense of relief and tenderly pulled a lock of chestnut-colored hair back from her brow before he kissed the top of her head. The spinner briefly became visible on his mien when he did, but he suddenly realized that they'd already been discovered. People were running towards them from the building and from the stables. Carefully moving out from under her, he scrambled to his feet and made himself invisible, though he had little hope of containing the damage he'd just done.

Her eyes were a confused mess of half a dozen emotions when he glanced back at her. He turned away nonetheless and tried to focus his attention on the fleeting memory he had of the henchman Blue had sent, having caught a glimpse of the man's face before the doors to the corridor had shut. He'd make _very sure_ that the man would catch a glimpse of _his_ face before he'd set about _tearing him apart_.


	6. Greed

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6. Greed

_Greed_, the Dark One decided, settling into the soft, plush armchair by the fire in King George's Great Hall, was indeed a powerful motif. He recognized_ insatiability _when he saw it, and it was in the other man's every contemplation. It consumed empathy as a whole, if left unchecked, and the sorcerer realized that its ravenous nature had rendered its current host hard-hearted and cold towards the needs of his people. He was a man who'd crossed so many lines that he wasn't even aware he was doing it anymore.

_Cold_ was a state of being Rumpelstiltskin could relate to because the emptiness he felt within his own blackened heart was icy when _she_ wasn't with him. It was freezing and numbing, both inwards and out. The spinner _Belle_ had been bringing forth in him more and more, however, was present here even today, for some reason. He was a part of the Dark One now, though he hadn't felt his essence since Bae had left. _The spinner_ was nauseated by the callous arrogance of the unfeeling mortal soul seated opposite him. Casually stretching out a hand towards the hearth to warm his fingers, he wondered if the nobleman could feel the heat of the dancing, crackling flames at all.

George sat quietly in his own seat, studying the sorcerer, and deliberated on how best to deliver the request he was about to forward without seeming too eager. The price of black magic was always steep, and Rumpelstiltskin was a profiteer and a dab hand at demanding the one thing in return for his services that anyone would be least inclined to offer freely. Nonetheless, the sorcerer had never named a price that George wouldn't have been willing to pay… never _once_, in all the years they'd known each other. Any price he could ask would most certainly be worth getting Robin of Locksley's head on a pike, but why jack it up?

A pretty, dark-haired young servant with bright features and a sad smile brought in a decanter of wine and poured it for both men. George took a sip from his goblet and rested it on his leg, leaning back. "I've been having some trouble with the vermin in my yard recently," he told the other man, who was sniffing at his drink and still trying to decide whether or not to taste the tepid, vinegary beverage he'd been served.

"So I've heard," he replied, setting it down on the armrest and grinning as his eyes narrowed. "Rats can be terribly bothersome creatures."

"Indeed," George said stiffly. "The merchants that normally come here to our market once a month have been staying away because they fear the forest road." _Oh, the taxes this had already cost him… _

"Your cat's not on its toes," Rumpelstiltskin stated with a flourish of his hand, leaning forward. "Perhaps you might want to get a new one? Or set some traps?"

The king had been playing with the idea of getting a new one, but wasn't quite willing to let Nottingham go just yet; his wife would certainly object to the dismissal of her sister's bastard from his services. And, he had to admit that the man had put a great amount of effort into the matter, so he was willing to be lenient.

"Smart rats don't go for traps," he retorted. "Especially if they always have advance warnings."

Nottingham had put even greater amounts of effort into that particular matter, but he hadn't been able to find out who was giving Locksley all that detailed information on their every move, which was particularly annoying.

George disgruntledly drained his goblet in one swig and pulled a face. "Marian!" he barked, and his wife's lady-in-waiting, who was standing in for the girl that normally attended him since she was presently attending her husband's hanging, swiftly obliged him with a refill. She caught the sorcerer's eye because she seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place her just yet.

_So_, Rumpelstiltskin pondered, genuinely amused, _the good sheriff was having his arse whipped by a bunch of squatters in the sticks that called themselves 'The Merry Men' – how very embarrassing._

The little kingdom George claimed to reign over by the divine right was currently stricken with famine, and the hungry were literally eating dead grass off the frozen fields and dry bark off the young birch trees in the woods. It was no wonder that the king wasn't getting any kind of support from his bondsmen when it came to Robin of Locksley. The Hooded Man was stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, while George was still thinking up ways to extract resources from the peasantry, which was like trying to squeeze water from a stone, at this stage of the game. Most people thought that Locksley was a hero, and they would never give him away.

"Perhaps you should reconsider your approach," the Dark One suggested, and the king raised an eyebrow.

"What would you have me do?"

The sorcerer was just about to answer, the strategist's slow smile spreading across his face, when several people entered the Hall, George's adopted son, James, ahead of them, and Nottingham in his wake. James was almost twenty now. Rumpelstiltskin watched him take off his gloves and fling them carelessly at the servant, catching her off-guard, as he crossed the floor towards them. There was an extremely self-satisfied look on his haughty face, and Nottingham seemed similarly pleased with himself.

"We took care if Hazelbrooke," the young prince smirked. "Smoke and ashes." His hands fluttered through the air, mimicking the flying cinders that were still rising on the wind above the remnants of the village they had just laid waste to.

Nottingham, who was as greasy as they came, pushed his chin out and made an indiscernible noise of agreement that had something of a grunt as he came to stand beside the prince, while the soldiers, who were keeping their distance behind him shuffled about uneasily. The sneer on his lips waned when he saw that the man whom his king was speaking to was the Dark One.

The corners of George's lips curled upwards, his eyes gleaming with interest and… _pride_ at his son's active participation in this little endeavor. "Did you make sure to leave no one alive?" he asked his captain.

Nottingham nodded, though his gaze was warily fixed to the sorcerer's, who was probing inside his shallow mind for the images of the massacre he had just initiated.

"We staged a pretty impressive example, sire," he told his king.

The sheriff and his men had been quite thorough, it seemed; Rumpelstiltskin was getting vivid, moving pictures of screaming, frightened and unarmed people running from swords, spears and torches, and the sickening stench of burning flesh filled his nose. He was surprised to catch a fleeting tweak of the Nottingham's conscience at the death and destruction he'd had his guardsmen deal out, though. Especially at what _he'd_ dealt out _himself_. The man may have lost any amount of control that he'd been capable of exercising during the carnage he'd commanded, but he_ knew _it, and he'd made up his mind to drown the memory of this day in sheer floods of ale later on that evening.

"We hanged half a dozen of them and left them in plain sight," James snorted, puffing his chest, "and we burned the rest."

At that, the lady-in-waiting let out a small shriek of horror and dropped the carafe she'd been holding, spilling the wine as it shattered on the stone floor. The king shot her an angry, resentful look, and Nottingham unexpectedly and imposingly bent to help her gather the shards, increasing her awkwardness and shame tenfold. Rumpelstiltskin couldn't help but notice how upset she was. Perhaps she had a connection to the village Nottingham and James had just obliterated. It was also quite plain to see that the sheriff was making her extremely uncomfortable, and he wondered just how often he'd already attempted to force himself on her.

Turning his attention back to the prince, the sorcerer tilted his head and tried to get a better take on him. It had been a while since he'd last seen James. He got the same kind of images of blood and fear that he'd found in Nottingham's head, but sensed unbounded, ruthless ambition and a total lack of remorse to boot. There was intoxication, and a lust for power – a deep, overwhelming yearning for influence and recognition. That in itself didn't strike Rumpelstiltskin as particularly strange in any boy raised by George. He had, however, hoped for a more inert sense of restraint and foresight in the shepherd's son.

Destiny must have tricked him into taking the wrong twin from his mother's arms. He simply hadn't been paying attention the day he'd come to collect the price of the magic that was necessary to save that disgrace of a sheep farm, he decided.

"Not a very wise move, if you'll forgive my saying so," he pointed out, tenting his fingers.

James' expression froze, his eyes darting between his father and his guest. "Oh?"

George patiently waited for the Dark One to elaborate, and the sorcerer raised himself to his feet. He began to walk back and forth in front of the fire place, clasping his hands behind his back.

"Ruling by fear is one thing, but you're killing off your field-laborers like you could afford to." His voice was low and calm when he stopped pacing and stood beside the prince, whose lips were drawn to a thin line. "There's nothing like a few hundred peasants with pitchforks at the castle gates for an enjoyable demonstration of the people's scorn when they have nothing left to lose, dearie, and you'll remember I said that."

"We know that the people of Hazelbrooke have been hiding that outlaw, and – "

"And you're making a martyr of a petty thief and anyone who would be willing to aid him."

He placed a hand on the young man's shoulder, and in his mind, he suddenly found himself confronted with an adult-version of the other twin, David, the one he probably should have taken instead, sitting across from him at the long banqueting table in the Great Hall of Dark Castle. He was sure it was David, and not James, because James would never have been seated at any table in his house. David had retained the open-heartedness and sincerity he'd felt about him on his occasional visits to the shepherd's family over the last years. The fact that he was nothing like his brother was there in his smile, in the absence of the _cold_ that surrounded the other brother's heart, and in the content of the conversation he was carrying on with the man beside him: Robin of Locksley, whom George had been just about to ask the Dark One to eliminate in their present time...

_This was interesting._

Leaning forward in her chair on David's other side was the woman Leopold's daughter had become, Snow White, whom Midas would have had the sorcerer do away with some years ago...

_Even more interesting._

Rumpelstiltskin was surprised to discover that Robin was obviously no more an outlaw than David in this other time, and he could see that both men were at ease with each other as they talked on eye-level about the plight of several hundred refugees from a place called Storybrooke on the encampment within his castle grounds. They were discussing how best to keep them fed.

Snow White was no longer the over-protected and bored little princess he knew from several fairly fresh encounters with her in his present day and age. Perhaps this was owing to Regina's dubiously ambivalent influence. He was intrigued by the amount of life-experience and spunkiness he detected about the eyes of the still young woman, and noted the way she would cast small glances at David every now and then while she was speaking to the person who sat across from her and next to him, holding his hand in hers: Belle. _His_ _Belle_. The cold and the emptiness subsided.

His wife pushed some stray locks back from her face and somewhat dreamily returned his gaze upon realizing that he was looking at her. It worried him that she appeared to be a bit tired and drawn, but he was aware that she was pregnant and having a hard time with that. From the chronological alignment that was becoming clearer and more defined to him with every vision he had involving her, he also knew that this wasn't the day she'd be taken from him – this was some other time in the future, when she was still safe. _They_ were still safe.

Another voice caught his attention then, and he leaned forward to look at the man sitting next to Belle. It took him a moment, but his heart jumped into his throat when he recognized his son.

He almost wouldn't have guessed, because the last time he'd seen his boy, Baelfire had been fourteen years old, lanky and bearish, often insecure and doubtful with a right to be. The dark-haired man sipping water from a cup next to his wife now was well into his thirties, clean-limbed, self-assured and alert to his surroundings... but _it was Baelfire,_ and the spinner in him was staring open-mouthed and awed. The puzzle was almost complete now, and the _hope_ that was growing in him was breathtakingly inspiring. _Hope_, as a by-product of other men's _greed_… He couldn't get enough of looking at Bae, cherishing the moment until it faded, and he remained still for a time after the image was gone.

Clearing his throat and straightening, the king writhed in discomfort at the preoccupied silence the Dark One had left them off with. "Well… do you think we could come to _some __agreement_ concerning the vermin at large in my kingdom?" George finally inquired.

"I'm very certain of it," the sorcerer replied dryly, thinking that he would definitely have to do something about improving this year's crop, as well as humbling the spoilt brat he was looking at, and getting the young woman who was still cleaning the floor at Nottingham's feet out of harm's way.


	7. Desire

_**Thank you again everyone who followed and favorited this little tale of darkness... I especially appreciated the lovely feedback and encouragement of my wonderful reviewers: Twyla Mercedes, emospritelet, Rumbeller25, cynicsquest, NobodyToo, dullhouse, LynRWard**_

_**This chapter is not quite as dark as the others. Be aware, however, that it does contain just a little bit of smut. Just a little bit. The soundtrack to that is Anette Olzon's beautiful "Invincible", from which I took the lyrics.**_

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7. Desire

_Desire_, he felt, was for men – but he wasn't a man. He was a monster, even when he'd used magic to change his appearance. The spell he'd cast upon himself had taken him weeks to complete, and it was almost perfect. It turned him into the semblance of the man he had once been: the spinner, Rumpelstiltskin.

The spinner desired her as much as the monster did. But… did he have a right to _desire_? He wasn't entirely sure. He was, however, certain of the fact that he had to see her – he'd kept away from her for as long as he could, and this was the end of his rope.

Belle was his by destiny, and he dreamed of claiming her. He longed to take her for his own. His desire was a dream of yearning and love, but this dream was so unlikely to come true, it almost seemed as though fate was taunting him with it. Perhaps it had been giving him glimpses of her all these years just to make the fall he was in for all the harder, all the more painful if he woke up to a reality where she would never ache for his touch the way he did for hers. But… he _had_ been seeing her all these years, and, in his visions, she was always his… Perhaps not now, but she was destined to be. How that would come to be was still beyond him, but he was determined to find out. It was time he dared to, or he would never know.

He could hardly _court_ her; Belle was the Lady of Avonlea, and she was young and beautiful… _so breathtakingly beautiful _in his mind… She had a lifetime's worth of suitors, all of them with a lifetime's worth of desire in their eyes when they looked at her. Some of them were barely her age, and others were double it. He was well five times that, and although he wanted her to be his, he had no idea how she would look at him; how she _could_ look at him when the mask he was wearing broke away and revealed the monster?

The doubts in his mind were confusing him, and he hated the complicated muddle they made of his thoughts. His magic would work to give him back his human likeness only for this one night, and the sun was already setting in the west, bathing the sky in red and golden light while he studied his face in the mirror, turning it this way and that and tracing his fingers over his mouth and clean-shaven chin. He'd never been a good-looking man, but he _had_ been _a_ _man_ in another life. _A_ _man_ _had_ _desire_, and he would not pass up this chance to see her through a man's eyes, just this once.

He was going, no matter what. That was that, he decided, and finished buttoning his golden vest over the white frilled shirt he was wearing. After he'd donned the midnight blue brocaded frock coat that had been lying across the back of a chair behind him, he ran his fingers through the wiry hair his spell had left as it was, wondering if it would be very conspicuous. No, he thought not, and straightened his back, smoothing over the soft, black leather of his pants at the thighs with slightly clammy hands, as he vanished from the room.

Tonight, Avonlea was lit up for the celebration all the way to the rooftops of its slim, elegant turrets. The wide main entrance door he simply strolled through after materializing behind a tree in the courtyard was decorated with wreaths woven from delicate pink hedge roses, and the unobtrusive, agreeable scent of them lingered in his nose pleasantly as he made his way unhindered and unnoticed down the red carpeted hallway towards the ballroom and the lovely music playing there.

He recognized her the moment he laid eyes on her from across the room. His mouth fell open, and his breath caught; she was well into her twenties now, and by no means the child he remembered anymore as she moved gracefully over the parquette with the handsome young man she was with.

She was wearing a luxurious golden full-length ball gown with subtle trimmings of lace and embroidery, cut off at the shoulder with a stunning décolleté neckline. Her long, flowing hair was pinned up and back from her face, chestnut-colored curls highlighted with tiny white rosebuds and cascading loosely down her back. The spinner's hands fell to his sides, and he remained still for a moment, in awe, unable to take his eyes off her.

The man she was dancing with was way too close to her, he thought tensely; the blundering idiot had absolutely no idea what he was doing with his two left feet. Belle, however, did, and a slow, wicked smile crept over the spinner's mien as she pulled back and faced away from Sir Gaston de Frimeur discretely when he invaded her space for the umpteenth time, treading on her feet in the process. Her body spoke a very clear language as she kept him firmly at elbow's length from there on in.

The music paused, and she indulged her tall hulk of a partner with a small, vacuous smile, mumbling something noncommittal when he reluctantly released her. The spinner absently accepted a goblet of wine from a servant offering it to him, watching her cross the floor. He raised it to his lips but did not drink. It would go to his head, and he didn't want that right now.

Suddenly, he realized that she was looking right at him from where she was. Her eyes met his gaze unexpectedly, and he held it for a moment before he dipped his head and turned away to replace the goblet on the tray that was balancing on the servant's hand in passing him the other way again. She might think he'd been staring at her… Hell, he _had_ been staring at her. Would she feel piqued at the thought? _Of course _she would. Any Lady of her standing would. _Whatever had he been thinking?_

But… why _had_ she noticed him among all these people? Not that it mattered; she wasn't likely to remember that. Not with the sum of all the more congenial distractions she'd find here tonight. She wasn't hard up for company, and she wouldn't want to be looking at an unattractive man she didn't know. She could take her pick of so many more affable men to dance or engage in conversation with, one after the other tonight...

"We haven't been introduced," she said softly, startling him when she came next to him, taking off her gloves to choose a piece of fruit from the serving dish on the table behind him. She had to reach around him to do so, and her arm brushed his sleeve lightly. The fleeting touch caused a nervous spasm in his stomach, and the tingle it evoked rose right up into his chest. He swallowed hard in trying to contain it and stop the heat of it from reaching his head. Then, gathering himself, he faced her, whole body, and smiled.

_Where was the harm?_ he told himself. He was meddling with destiny again, _yes_. He was running the risk of changing the future again, _yes_. But the _emptiness_ was gone, and the _darkness_ was gone… even the _blood_ was gone... He was all the way out in the light of her presence, and he couldn't see the harm in talking to her like this, _just this once_… Being this close to her, _just this once_, in all the years he'd waited for her. _This was_ _so good_. Of course it was outrageous, but he couldn't deny himself this anymore. Not tonight. He _needed_ to be near her tonight… _Just for tonight_, and just for as long as he'd hold her attention, which was bound to be for a fleeting moment only...

He felt his mind slipping away again to another place and another time as he plucked some red grapes from the same dish she'd taken the dripping, thin slice of melon she was holding. He didn't mean for his thoughts to stray, since he wanted nothing more than to intently enjoy this fleeting moment while he was actually standing here with her at long last, enthralled by her, captivated by her, fascinated by her… but they did.

_There was desire in her eyes. Unlikely as it would appear to him, there was longing in her gaze, and he saw himself drawing her close, cradling her cheek gently with his hand. She responded to his kiss by deepening it, her tongue brushing his lips just inside his mouth and caressing his, as she ran her fingers through his hair, resting them at the back of his head. He felt the warmth of her body pressing against him and tasted the silky smooth skin along her jawline and down her neck when he began undressing her slowly, moving his lips across every inch of her that he bared, starting with her shoulders. _

"Sir Gabriel Ténébreaux," he mumbled, clicking his heels together and hinting a bow, desperately trying to anchor his attention in the here and now. He hadn't thought he'd be caught off guard by her and in need of a pseudonym. Never in a thousand years had he anticipated that he'd find himself actually talking to her. Not yet anyway. He would have been content to just be looking at her from a distance. Yet here she was, standing beside him. He saw inquisitiveness in her eyes, and sweet, warm goodness, an open mind and… in interest in him, somehow, as she waited for him to continue. An interest that made his head spin… all the way back to where his mind's eye had been trying to take him a minute before…

_She smelled of sunlight and roses when she lay down on his bed, pulling him along with her gently. He was on his knees and elbows above her, relishing every touch, every single second of slowly moving his hands over her body and following them with his mouth. He kissed his way up her belly, tenderly stroking his fingers over the soft, lacy fabric of her bra, and around her back, towards its fastener, pressing his lips to hers as he tried to open it. There was an awkward moment when it became clear that he couldn't seem to undo the hooks, unskilled in the craft as he was. Chuckling timidly into his mouth, she helped him with the task, and discarded the garment on the floor. Returning his attention to her breasts, he kissed one of her nipples, swirling his tongue around it, while the pad of his thumb traced circles around the other, his hand cupping her breast._

_Where the hell were they? _he asked himself, overwhelmed and somewhat flustered by what he was seeing.

"I've never seen you at my father's court before," she said, reconsidering her choice of food with a slight frown when she discovered that eating the sweet treat in his presence without making a complete mess of herself would prove more of a challenge than she was willing to tackle.

He suppressed a grin and took note of the oddly familiar way she was tormenting her lower lip when she looked down at her melon, wondering whether it would be rude to put it back. Taking it off her hands in exchange for the small bunch of grapes he'd opted for meant moving closer to her than he'd intended. The scent of her… _sunlight and roses_… it was as intoxicating as her smile.

_He felt himself trembling slightly with anticipation when she began tugging up his shirt where they knelt, trailing kisses up his neck and pressing herself to him as he tangled his fingers in her hair and nuzzled the tender spot behind his ear. He could sense the tension that had been building in her and was rising still, rippling through her body, and briefly hesitated. They were husband and wife now, and he'd promised her _forever_, but this was the first time they were together like this, and he knew this was the first time she'd ever been with a man. She was his, only his, and he realized how privileged he was in that. He wanted her, desired her, ached to bury himself within her… but he was her first. He was surprised to find that he was probably just as nervous as she might be._

_"__Tell me if you want me to stop," he told her, his voice husky as he pulled away from her gently. He needed to be sure she was alright and really desired this as much as he did. "We can take our time, we don't have to do this tonight…"_

_"__No," she breathed into his ear before she resumed kissing his lips messily, tossing his shirt on the floor before she unbuckled his belt, not intending to stop in any way. "I want you so much… I need you…"_

_Straightening up, he struggled with his trousers for what seemed like a clumsy eternity, meaning to leave on his underpants for the time being, but she slipped her hands underneath the seam at his rear and stroked them down the sides of his thighs before he could protest, revealing him to her. She moved around him, nudging him tenderly into changing places with her, and he lay down on his back as she removed the rest of his clothing, her hands and mouth caressing every part of his exposed body. Her touch made him gasp, and her breath and tongue on the sensitive skin of his loins made him go rigid from the neck down for an instant. __He turned his head to one side and closed his eyes as she parted his legs to kneel between them. Lowering herself, she tasted him slowly and sweetly, n__early sending him over the edge._

_"Love, no…" he begged her desperately, and she sighed, letting up on him. She rubbed every centimeter of her body against his in drawing herself unhurriedly back up to resume kissing his lips._

"May I have this dance?" the spinner asked the Lady, astonished both at his own insufferable boldness as well as at the inexplicable calmness of his own voice when he offered his arm. She hesitated, and he reverently lowered his gaze to his feet.

"I must apologize, I was being too presumptuous."

Her clear blue eyes sparkled mischievously at him when next he dared to looked up, and she amazed him again by linking her arm under and letting him lead her to the parquette. They were in a ballroom full of people, but all at once, he had no perception of anyone else being there when their eyes locked as they danced to the music that was playing only for them.

Keeping an appropriate distance between them, they moved across the floor fluidly and in perfect synch, finding their rhythm instantly. The fact that Belle was dancing with a well-dressed man of unknown status whom no one seemed to recognize made all talk lapse into silence for a moment, while the dark-haired singer held her haunting melody:

Years, all the years,

Tears, all the tears,

I longed for you

All the prayers

My despair,

Couldn't bear

To wait for you

No more.

My dear, I'm here,

No fear –

_Both hands on her hips, he writhed beneath her, pulling himself upright into a sitting position. She was straddling him, and he felt her moist center pressed against his hard length through the silken fabric of her panties as she cradled his head in her hands, kissing him, his back to the headboard of the bed in the salmon-colored house. It was almost too much, almost painful, and he slid his hands upwards, dropped his mouth to her breasts and caressed them one after the other as she buried her face in his hair, breathing him in. Then, he leaned forward, extracting his legs out from under her, and gently pushed her back on the covers, sliding his hands underneath her thighs. He kissed her belly, tracing his lips and nose up to her navel and back, and finally peeled off her panties, his heart thumping in his throat as he did so. He hadn't bedded a woman in… forever… and every fiber of him throbbed and ached with want for her. _

_"__So beautiful," he told her, running his palms up the insides of her thighs, making her squirm when he reached her most tender folds with his fingers and lips. She gasped when she felt the warm, enthralling pressure of his mouth on her sex and stiffened, grabbing fistfuls of sheets as he tasted her, moving his tongue around just inside her, exploring her and reveling in her scent._

See the stars glow,

All their gazing lights

On you…

Feel, can you feel,

What I feel?

I'm near you

And your hand,

Holding mine,

Only mine

There's no one else…

The music seemed to go on and on, the entrancing voice of the singer reverberating sensually, evocatively, carrying through the ballroom that now appeared to be empty but for them now. He couldn't take his eyes off her at all, and she was just as lost in his gaze as he was in hers. _So beautiful_, he thought, _so very, very beautiful_. How had he gotten so lucky? He'd have to let go of her soon, nonetheless… he'd have to leave her soon…

_But not just yet. _

She was his by destiny, but he couldn't take her with him yet, though every fiber of his being wanted to.

_"__I love you," she whispered breathlessly, as he slowly kissed his way back up to her middle. He was lost in the fragrance of her longing, the delicious texture of her desire in his mouth, on his lips, on his cheeks, everywhere on him, and everywhere on her. The skin of her knees and inner thighs brushed against his waist as he moved upwards. The thumbs and palms of his hands exerted a firm and pleasurable pressure on her sides and lower back, eventually working their way across her belly and up her chest to her breasts in circles and ovals. _

_He could taste himself on her tongue when he parted her lips with his once more, licking at it lavishly before he carefully reached down between them to align himself with her. Stopping there, lingering at her entrance, teasing her, he took his time in pulling a strand of her fragrant hair from her brow, and relished the desperate pulsing of their yearing until he was sure neither of them could take any more. _

_"__I love you," he told her back softly, burying his face in the hollow between her shoulder and neck for a moment as he pushed himself inside her slowly. He felt her arching up towards him as he did. Her head rolled back on her neck, and she pulled her knees up to allow him to enter her as deeply as he could and fill her wonderfully. Aware of the fleeting shadow of a dull pain within her, he raised his own head and watched her face intently, biting down on his lip and holding his breath until he sensed that it was passing. When it did, he began rocking her ever so gently, her tightness and the friction of their movement, her clenching and releasing around him so unbearably good… far too good... He had no idea how he was going to last long enough to give her the kind of pleasure he knew he was so close to._

She blushed and cast her eyes downwards, half closing them, when the spinner raised his hand to her face and brushed her cheek lightly with the back of his fingers, trailing his thumb along her jawline to imprint the memory of this moment within his mind.

_He shifted about slightly, so as to ease up on them both, and presently tried to slow his pace, playing for time, but she wouldn't let him. She'd only moved along with him at first, but now she braced herself against him and took control. He was lost. Spiraling towards oblivion at the point of no return, he vaguely noted that she cried out several times, and he increased his efforts, the blinding, explosive force of his release numbing him blissfully to her fingernails digging into his back and drawing blood as she came undone when he did. _

"I am the luckiest man on this earth tonight," he told her quietly, and her blush deepened. "You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen." He took both her hands in his once more and linked his fingers with hers, moving closer to her than he should have. He raised them to his lips and kissed them, before backing away sufficiently to refocus on her whole appearance, committing all of her to his memory. "I wish I didn't have to do this…" he whispered, barely audible.

"Do what?" she inquired, waking up to herself in an instant at his unfitting statement.

_What had she been thinking_, the look on her face told him as she tried to shake off his hands, glancing around in disbelief when she realized that they were _factually alone_ in a ballroom that had been crowded just a few minutes ago. Shortly before the strangeness of the situation could take on the kind of dramatic dimensions that might end in catastrophe for them both, he blinked, and reality started fading in once again. The merry chatter of people and the swish of exquisite gowns sounded back gradually, layering the music, and they were surrounded by talking, laughing, eating, dancing people, as though it had never been any different.

"Leave you like this," he replied forlornly, lowering his head as he squeezed her hands in a curt goodbye and backed away. He felt the sharp pang of loss the moment he'd let go of her, but turned and kept walking, leaving her behind to wonder what she was doing in the middle of the dance floor amidst all these people on her own. Feeling her eyes on his back, he hesitated in the arcading doorway just long enough for her to register that something was tugging at her heart, making her eyes sting with unshed tears. Then, throwing all caution to the wind, he finally teleported out of the room just to get away, so that he would not be tempted to turn back, and so she could not even think of following him.


	8. Pain

**_As always, thank you to everybody who favorited and is following, especially to my wonderful reviewers for their consistent feedback and encouragement: emospritelet, Twyla Mercedes, cynicsquest, CJ Moliere, rumbeller25 – love hearing back from you! _**

**_NobodyToo: you're _almost_ right – this is a prequel to the show as such leading up to season 1, though. The other stories I wrote pick up after the midseason finale of season 3. It would stand on its own just as well, so. My main aim was to do some backgrounds on the characters the show never really explored properly and fill in some of the blanks that it left us with. Hall of Mirrors is the third and final part, and it should conclude the plot line I've been working on when I get back to it._**

**_belle: glad you do, am on it!_**

**_Guest: Thank you for saying so – I enjoy writing this very much at the moment._**

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8. Pain

_Pain_ was what people feared most about death. An exceptionally long life had taught him that, but he'd already been aware of the fact when he'd still been a mortal. The spinner had lived with pain for the better part of his existence. There was the physical kind that he'd suffered at the hands of others, at the hands of fate, and at his own hands. And then, there was the other kind that could be even more daunting and consuming, depending on who would inflict it.

In a world where a neglected sore could quickly lead to the amputation of a limb or death – or one after the other in rapid succession – people were willing to pay the price of magic quite readily for a spell or a potion that would save them from pain and their fear of pain. Depending on the importance of the affected limb for earning a livelihood, a family's size and standing, or the mindset of the desperate soul asking, however, that price could vary. More often than not, it would lead to the other kind of pain eventually.

In a world where a broken heart could quickly lead to the dilapidation and withering away of any writhing soul along the road to its own perdition, the Dark One had long since vowed that he would never be on the receiving end of any kind of pain again, if he could help it. He'd rarely had trouble dealing it out, however, since it was a part of what he was, and a reminder of what the spinner had once been. He hadn't been much affected by other people's pain in the last three hundred years or so – not until very recently, when something had started to change… when his reality had started to shift. Unexpectedly, the spinner had resurfaced again, and surprisingly, more often than not, the Dark One was tolerant of his presence and the acute awareness of pain that he seemed to drag along with him.

Nonetheless, accepting life and the world for what it was meant deciding what end of pain he'd rather be on for the most part, as well as coping with the choices he had to make so he could keep moving through the aftermath of it on some level when it was over. It made sleep hard to come by at times recently, but in the end, having the power to make those kind of choices for himself was the reason the spinner had become what the Dark One was now. It was how the coward had found the courage within to drive the dagger into Zoso's heart right up to the hilt. To his mind, electing _not_ to be helpless was probably the only really good choice the spinner had ever made in all his miserable, human life.

Rumpelstiltskin had a gift for observing people, and pain was one of the things he most swiftly and easily singled out. When someone summoned him, it was almost always the first thing he'd sense about them. A hint of the quality and depth of it was usually mingled in with the sour scent of their fear, but sometimes it was even audible in the tone of their calling.

When the Hatter summoned him, the Dark One heard the pain in Jefferson Chapeau's voice as distinctly as though he'd been standing next to him at his writing desk in the tower. Chapeau was special, and the sorcerer had always had a soft spot for him, so he didn't want to keep him waiting for too long. Hurriedly finishing the inscription on the first page of the book he'd picked out for Belle's birthday, he signed it with his usual – R.

She was turning twenty-five today, and he would have given _anything_ to deliver this present to her himself, but he dared not. Not after what he'd _felt_ when he'd danced with her. Not after what he'd _seen_ when he'd touched her. If he was to go to her now, he might never be able to leave her again, so instead, he did what he did every year: he handed it to Colm Messenger to spare himself the pain.

The tall, baldheaded shape-shifter had been waiting patiently for his parcel, and he tucked the book safely into the lining of his cloak without speaking. Bowing curtly, he turned, made a small run up to the open window, and changed fluidly to his white dove-form as he leapt out in much the same way that he'd entered. Rumpelstiltskin got to his feet and strode over to the window, watching him take wing and soar high into the sky. He remained there quietly for a while and gazed out into the blue because he was too distracted by his image of _her_ to picture the Hatter. He had to envision Chapeau clearly in his mind in order to find him though, so there was nothing he could do but wait until it passed. Finally, he found sufficient room in the shoals of his mind to concentrate on Jefferson, and vanished.

Chapeau was out in the forest, as far away from his house and his infant daughter as an hour's foot march would take him. It wasn't that he didn't trust the sorcerer; he'd learned to read him quite well, and they had their understanding, but he didn't want _anyone_ near his home or near Grace right now. He was hurting deeply.

"Back, are you?" the sorcerer observed, materializing next to him with his hands clasped loosely behind his back.

He strode a half-circle around him, and took note of dark shadows around the Hatter's eyes; they spoke volumes of the sleep the younger man had been losing for some reason. It wasn't like him at all to appear unkempt, and he reeked of sweat and ale. Rumpelstiltskin assumed that Jefferson had to be in all kinds of trouble, but he couldn't look into the Hatter's head any more than the Hatter would look him in the eye.

"What happened?" the sorcerer inquired after a moment, tilting his head.

"She's gone," Jefferson replied bluntly, and swiped a hand over his unshaven chin. "I made a mistake, and I can't undo it… so… Madeline's gone."

"Should have listened to me, dearie," the sorcerer said without deliberation, and the Hatter's jaw clenched. "Regina isn't very particular about collateral damage."

"I don't know what to do," Jefferson admitted, his voice wavering, and Rumpelstiltskin sighed.

Hesitantly, the Hatter opened the satchel he'd been carrying and pulled out a book. "I finally completed the instructive section on sand dollars, like you asked me to, and some other things besides," he told him and presented it to the sorcerer, but pulled back when Rumpelstiltskin reached for it greedily. "Will you help me?"

The sorcerer considered. "Would that work, even for someone without your… Talent?" he asked, and at that, Jefferson handed him the tome. Rumpelstiltskin eagerly opened it in the middle right away and leafed through it, seemingly at random, his eyes darting over the meticulous handwriting.

The Hatter nodded and refastened the buckles of his pouch before he shouldered it. "Of course it would," he claimed. "For messages, if unused, and for traveling if it's got a personal anchor in the world you're looking to connect with."

Rumpelstiltskin snapped the book shut and fixed his eyes to Jefferson's. "Then tell me why there's nothing in _here_," he began slowly, and tapped the cover of the book, "or in _here_," he continued more brusquely, tapping the Hatter's brow, "that can help _you_ get your wife back."

There it was again, the sorcerer realized just then: _pain. In all its shades of helplessness_. Some of it threatened to spill over and touch him, and he backed away from Jefferson.

"Because _something_ _else_ slipped past me when we were trying to return from Arda," the Hatter explained, his voice barely above a whisper. "I wasn't paying attention, and I didn't see it, but something must have been waiting for me to open that portal and cross over from one world to the other. Magic is so strong there, it's thick as porridge, and I just couldn't hold on to her."

Rumpelstiltskin had warned Jefferson not to enter into this bargain with Regina. He'd had a bad feeling, though he could never get a good visual on Chapeau's future, for some reason. _One life for one life_ was the equation that got the Hatter and anyone else he brought along with him back and forth between the worlds he could access. If that equation was somehow disturbed, however, there would be a steep price to pay, and the sorcerer had sensed that there would be pain this time.

Regina had talked the young man with the fairy blood into going to Arda to find a certain plant she needed to complete a potion. That potion was intended for the woman whom Regina was convinced represented the very essence of her life's personal agony, the focus of all her loathing: Snow White. The Evil Queen had cooked up a plan that involved George getting Snow to drink it, somehow, and the Dark One had briefly considered intervening. Briefly. He'd changed his mind when he'd seen the result of George's efforts in David's future, though.

The plant Regina was after only grew in two places, and since Jefferson couldn't access the World Without Magic, Arda had been the only other option. Neither Jefferson nor Regina knew what Smartweed looked like, but Madeline, the daughter of a midwife who'd been taught how to prevent unwanted pregnancies permanently, did. She'd agreed to come along because Regina had promised them five times what she'd give them on any other run.

"Did you go back?" Rumpelstiltskin asked delicately, and Jefferson squeezed his eyes shut.

"_I couldn't!_" he replied, his voice growing brittle as he squatted down and pressed the heels of his palms against his temples.

"Because you disrupted the balance…" the sorcerer mumbled softly, drawing his conclusions.

The Hatter nodded. His chest heaved and tears started streaming over cheeks. He buried his face in his hands and cried like a child. Pain.

The Dark One awkwardly faced away from Chapeau and considered what he'd been told for a moment, weighing the book in his hand. He wasn't sure if the thought that began to form a texture in his mind was a bargain he could actually live up to, but he suddenly felt that striking it would be imperative to both of them. Hunkering down beside the Hatter without looking at him, he waited until Jefferson had regained himself sufficiently to take in what he was going to suggest.

"I've lost someone, too," the spinner confessed haltingly, grasping the book firmly in both hands, and Jefferson glanced sideways at him. Rumpelstiltskin hadn't spoken of his son in almost three hundred years to _anyone_. "It's been a long time," he went on, almost to himself, "but I know I can still find my son, because I know that he's still alive. I can feel it." He paused there for a moment, probing in his heart, trying to see whether or not he still actually could. "If you help me do what it takes to get him back, I'm going make sure you get your wife back. This won't be today, and it won't be tomorrow. It might take years, but I it _can_ be done."

The Hatter frowned, and the sorcerer firmly met his gaze. He almost didn't expect him to answer after what seemed like an eternity of deliberation. Finally, Jefferson raised himself to his feet and resolutely offered his hand to the older man. "Tell me what I have to do," he said, and Rumpelstiltskin took it, hoisting himself up.

"I'll let you know," he retorted earnestly, and left him standing there alone, as he disappeared when he sensed that Messenger had returned to the tower.

"She won't accept it from me," the shape-shifter stated bluntly when the sorcerer reappeared at his side, and he motioned at the book he'd already set down on the desk. Rumpelstiltskin flung the tome Jefferson had given him beside it. The leather bindings were roughly the same size and color.

"She says she'll only accept it from the man who sends it," Messenger continued, and the ghost of a smile touched the spinner's lips, spreading slowly to his eyes as he folded his arms across his chest.

_How interesting,_ he thought, quirking an eyebrow. _This_, _he had not expected_…

Was it arrogance? Or was it simply her bold refusal to accept _her_ life and _her_ world for what they were _supposed to be?_ Knowing what he did of her, he was willing to bet that it was the latter.

"Alright," he told his helper and dismissed him. The shifter gave a small bow and opted for the door as his choice of exit this time around.

_There was no way he could place that book in her hands. _

_Out of the question. _

_Nothing doing. _

He tried to picture her, and he saw that she was alone in the orchard. Cherry blossoms were swirling through the air, and Brimstone butterflies danced on the breeze as she sat quietly on a bench beneath one of the oldest trees in the garden in the warm sunlight of early May. She was sketching the portrait of a man on a piece of parchment on her lap. Her fingers were blackened with the coal she was using, and when he shifted his gaze to the likeness she was working on, he was stunned at the resemblance that it bore to the spinner.

_Out of the question_, he told himself again, throwing his head back on his neck. _No way._

The dragonskin cloak that hung from the corner of the shelf where he kept his beakers and glass tubes caught his eye. He walked over to it and put out his hand to stroke the soft leather. The slough it was made from had been a gift from the winterdragon, and he'd fashioned a garment from it that was much lighter than it looked, though it would warm him on an icy winter's day just as well as it would keep the heat off his back in summer. The really special thing about it, though, was that it would make its wearer invisible. He could just put it on and sneak a brief look, he thought. Just stand beside her for a moment in the whirling flurry of petals and softly flowing rays of light breaking through the branches. Feel the warm wind on his face and… feel her presence… drink in her scent…

_How he longed to hold her…_

Before he knew it, he'd donned the cloak and snatched the book from his desk. He closed his eyes so firmly in concentrating on her face that deep lines formed around them, and his brow furrowed. Then, he was gone.

The book appeared beside Belle, but she didn't notice right away. She had no idea when, or how it had gotten there as she picked it up and ran her fingers over the ornate bordure that went all the way around its edging. All at once, she had the strangest feeling that she wasn't alone. It was in the minuscule change of light and sound around her, in the manner that reality seemed to bend and alter its course on the airstream.

She took a deep breath and raised her chin. "Won't you show yourself?" she inquired tentatively. "I don't bite, you know."

He was right beside her, unseen. "And how would you know that _I_ don't bite?" he returned impudently.

She shifted both the book and the parchment off her lap and set them on the bench next to her. Turning to where she assumed him to be, she looked right through him, and he shuddered involuntarily.

"If you'd meant to harm me, you would have done so long ago," she countered, rising. "Instead, you insist on sending me books for my birthday, and…" she broke off briefly, fidgeting and searching the empty space around her intently, "and… you dance with me."

He could feel her breath on his skin.

Silence.

"That was you, wasn't it?" She brushed back a lock of chestnut-colored hair from her face and left a smudge of coal, as she unwittingly faced away from him. He smiled, though she couldn't see it. "Nobody seemed to know a Gabriel Ténébreaux, as it turned out," she continued, and he clasped his hands in front of his chin as though in prayer, placing his index fingers over his lips as he watched her pace aimlessly.

"It was," he eventually admitted, and she caught the faintest whiff of him, a scent she found both exciting and comforting at the same time, and strangely familiar as he followed her, stopped her, turned her gently to him, and drew her close. Her body went rigid, and she trembled slightly, as he slid his fingers downwards from her shoulders to fold her hands in his. He was amazed to find that it wasn't with fear.

"I want to see you," she breathed, and he leaned in to her, brushing his cheek against hers.

"No, you don't," he whispered in her ear, closing his eyes as she did, and his lips grazed hers for the fraction of a second. The fleeting touch of them on his mouth shook him to the core, and it threatened to tear him apart when he heard himself mumbling her name over and over in his head as he cradled her dying body in his arms on the floor of the Great Hall in the Dark Castle sometime in the future. In his mind, he saw that her blood was all over him, and there was nothing he could do. This was the day she would be taken from him. This was _fear_. This was _death_. And this was _pain_.


	9. Emptiness

_**Thank you everybody who's following this and favorited! Appreciate the feedback and great reviews: rumbeller25, cynicsquest, emospritelet, belle, Twyla Mercedes, NobodyToo.**_

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9. Emptiness

The_ emptiness_ he often felt since he'd started _feeling_ again at all quite recently was at its most consuming when he was alone with his thoughts and there was nothing to distract him from the gaping void in his heart. The spinner remembered _emptiness_ well from the first weeks after Milah had left him. There had been an unbearable, haunting silence in the cabin he'd built for his family after the child had gone to sleep in the evenings, and his emptiness and he had kept vigil there together night after night until he'd been able to acknowledge that she wouldn't be coming back. That had been nothing compared to the emptiness he'd felt after he'd lost his son, though. He recalled the moment he'd let go of Bae's hand in the portal as the moment he'd let go of the very last remaining morsels of his humanity.

The emptiness had become so overwhelming and frightening at this point that the sorcerer had simply decided to stop feeling it. He'd decided to stop feeling _anything_ but anger then, and he'd truly and consciously become the monster any warm-blooded, mindful human being would be right to fear. He'd used his anger to channel his magic, and the Dark One had freely and willfully administered so much pain and sorrow in the past two and a half centuries that he hadn't been able to pick up on the slightest trace of goodness or light in the endless darkness that surrounded him anymore. Not until recently, when he'd started having visions of _her_.

Sometime in the course of the last twenty-five years, a very distant, barely discernable and almost illusionary hint of luminescence had appeared in his otherwise empty universe, and he'd tried to avoid looking at it for as long as he could, but found himself increasingly unable to ignore its glow. He was drawn to it in ways he couldn't begin to explain, and it warmed his icy soul.

Having seen that he was bound by Destiny to fail Belle in the end, however, there was not just emptiness in his heart tonight, but fear and pain. Although he wouldn't accept that to any extent, it did prove to him that he was _alive_, and he _wanted_ to be alive. He _needed_ to be alive. He had more than one _reason_ to be alive. The spinner was waking up from a long and horrible nightmare, and the Lady was his salvation, so if he could actually manage to thwart Destiny and _not _fail her, somehow, he'd gladly be hers.

Trying to silence the echoes in his mind, he closed his eyes for a moment, envisioning her and filling his thoughts with the clear sound of her laughter, the contagious giggles that would erupt into bursts of whole-hearted enjoyment when something made her happy. He _loved_ to see her happy. The sorcerer _loved_ to envision how her face would light up with the sheer pleasure of amusement; that warm smile of hers always spread to her bright, blue eyes, and made them sparkle. He couldn't get enough of the dimples that furrowed her cheeks slightly unsymmetrically whenever she laughed, and it never ceased to amaze him what kind of seemingly trivial and insignificant things she was apt to take immeasurable delight in. Even if there was some loneliness, there was never emptiness within her; she was always full of aspirations and dreams, in awe at the wondrous world around her, and naturally inclined to believe in the promise of a future, as well as in the good that each moment held in store.

Rumpelstiltskin set the goblet he'd taken to the tower window down on the sill and leaned heavily on the narrow marble ledge, dipping his head. He breathed a little easier as her face took form in his mind, and he soon realized he was watching her in some other world again instead of his own. The fact that he was seeing her in what was probably the World Without Magic showed beyond a doubt that the things he'd set in motion were becoming reality.

She was wearing strange clothes and standing in some sort of workshop… _his_ workshop, he thought. He didn't know it yet, but she was actually in the back room of his pawnshop, and she'd been waiting there for the Blue Fairy when he caught up with her.

The young woman in the figure-hugging denims and tank top was making clockwise circular motions away from herself with both hands, her fingers splaying towards the shelves of broken knick-knack on the far wall. She mumbled a simple little spell that he recognized as one of his own. She must have learned it just by watching him in the weeks that had passed at his castle before... _before_…?

The sorcerer was suddenly confused. He didn't know how to fit this particular vision of her into the time-line he had in his head, and was forced to resign himself to the assumption that he most likely would, at some other, later time when he had more insight.

The objects that the shop owner had so obsessively stored in shelves and vitrines began rising up in the air, spinning and dancing to the music that was Belle's magic. He could very clearly both hear and see her exquisite ability at work, and it was awesome: it was a sheer firework of whirling particles in gold and silver mixed in with shades of blue, and the pure-toned, vibrant composition of sound that accompanied it followed Belle's very own motif as the melody rose and fell around her in perfect harmony with the waves she was causing to ripple through reality.

She was _so_ good at what she was doing, he thought, and her confidence showed. Observing her, he understood that she was taking control of things because she had far too much at stake not to, and the Fairy Queen, who was already on her way through the door behind her was going to find a worthy opponent in her. Belle had more than enough means to give her a good run for her money, possibly even a really miserable time, because it was obvious that she was taking pleasure in using her Gift. This was her Talent, and she embraced it to make it work for her, and the ghost of a smile touched his lips when he felt that there was nothing dark or angry about it whatsoever. Well, no more than the healthy amount necessary, he supposed, when she spun around and sent Blue flying across the room with a burst of white energy.

The vision faded when the Hatter entered the tower room. Jefferson looked a little better than he had the previous day; he was washed and shaven, and the sorcerer conjured a second goblet for him.

"No wine, please," he said, when he offered it to him. Rumpelstiltskin waved his hand over the cup, and the sweet, fruity wine he'd chosen for the Hatter's liking turned to water. Jefferson accepted, and walked over to the writing desk with it. He took a sip, and set it down, absently picking up the book he found there. Its binding was similar in size and color to the one he'd been working on for the Dark One before his world had been shattered.

"I've been meaning to ask you…" the sorcerer began hesitatingly, "when you returned from Arda, just exactly what was it that came back with you?"

The Hatter sat down and leaned back. He drew a deep breath while the other man reclaimed his goblet from the window sill and nipped at his drink, facing him from a distance.

"I've been racking my brain over that," Jefferson replied, shaking his head slightly. "The thing is, I was sure that Madeline was right beside me when we went into the portal. I was really sure she was..." There was a long silence, but Rumpelstiltskin waited patiently for him to continue. "When we emerged, I saw a wolf… but it wasn't an ordinary wolf. It was… much bigger."

"Bigger, you say?" the sorcerer asked, his eyes narrowing, and the Hatter nodded. "Like a timbre wolf?"

Again, the Hatter nodded. "Yes… But its eyes were different. They were green and really, _really_ scary."

"A shape-shifter, perhaps?" the sorcerer mused, slouching back against the wall behind him. Something was starting to ring a bell, but he couldn't quite grasp it.

"Could be," Jefferson conceded, and the Dark One took another swig of wine.

"Whatever it was, we should try to find it first thing in the morning and get it back to where it belongs as soon as possible." He emptied his goblet and set it down. "Maybe that way, we can restore the balance you've upset."

The Hatter seemed doubtful, but Rumpelstiltskin could see that he'd be willing to give it a shot, and he decided that they would start looking at first light. Whatever sort of wolf this was, he'd send it packing.

"Had a chance to look at the book yet?" Chapeau inquired after a while, changing the subject, and the sorcerer shook his head.

"No, I had to take care of a little something earlier… very disagreeable dark fairy with a tendency to over-dramatize," he explained, conjuring a sword out of thin air. "An old dragon. Whole kingdom's been asleep for a century, and finally someone's thought to just _ask_ me how to wake them all up again." A wicked grin played around his lips, and he swiftly whirled the expertly-crafted, elegant steel blade around in a well-measured diagonal pirate-full with a seemingly effortless flick of his right wrist, fluidly changed hands and did the same on the left. "Lovely little toy, don't you think?" he smugly drawled, repeating the performance several times.

Jefferson raised an eyebrow, tilting his head incredulously, and pointed his finger at the weapon Rumpelstiltskin was just setting down on a shelf for later delivery. "That's not…?"

"No, sadly not," the sorcerer laughed, "but it was forged by a descendant of the same sword smith. If Arthur had been in possession of this, he wouldn't have had half the back trouble he did. Much lighter, much sharper, less tiring, and especially recommendable for gardening. Philip will have quite a hedge to trim."

The Hatter thought about this for a moment, shook his head as if to lose the ridiculous notion of a prince battling straggling bushes and ivy ranks, and got to his feet.

"I might have something more to add to that chapter on sand dollars," he confessed and came back around the desk. "If I could just borrow it…"

The sorcerer shrugged and motioned at the tome sitting on the desk. "Be my guest,"

Jefferson's brow crinkled, and the Dark One felt unsettled by the look of bewilderment on the younger man's face. "That's not the book I gave you…"

"Yes, it is…" Rumpelstiltskin contradicted, snatching it up. He began leafing through it, and his eyes grew wide in disbelief when it dawned on him that the Hatter was right. The book he was holding was the book he'd meant to give to Belle. Belle, who now had a manuscript containing precise instructions on crossing realms.

The Dark One muttered something undiscernible under his breath, grabbed his dragonskin cloak, and disappeared, leaving the Hatter behind, slightly confused for the second time in as many days.

He found her in her room, sitting cross-legged on her bed with the book on her lap. She looked up for a moment, as though she'd felt a draft and was wondering if she'd left the door open. Her eyes darted back and forth between her dresser and the wardrobe where he stood quietly, watching her.

_What had he been thinking? What was he going to do? Ask her to swap? _

He found that he was holding his breath when he looked at her. He loved the way she would release her soft, flowing brown hair from the knot she generally wore during the day. She had wrapped a woolen shawl around her shoulders. It had seen better days, but he knew it was her favorite. He'd watched her snuggle into it many times before she'd settled down with some book or other, running her thumb along the side of the page she was reading and gathering up the words in her mind… the way she gathered images… the way she would one day gather her memories of him working his magic, so that she could work hers.

She eventually appeared to return her attention to the passage she'd been studying, but he still didn't have a clue as to how he was to approach her. If only he could get just _one look_ at her thoughts…

"I know you're there," she said unexpectedly then, and he startled. "I wish you'd show yourself, but that's not going to happen, is it?"

"No," he replied, almost apologetically, "I'm afraid not. Can't do that."

She closed the book, but didn't look up. "I like this," she said, and tapped her fingers on the leather binding. "It's fascinating. But it could get me in a lot of trouble if anybody knew I was reading this kind of thing."

"It wasn't meant for you," the sorcerer stated, and hesitatingly moved closer until he was standing at the foot of the bed. "I… I picked up the wrong one."

She released a breath and chuckled. "You can make yourself invisible and endeavor to travel across realms, but you _mistakenly_ gave me the wrong book?" Raising her chin, she scanned the room, perhaps hoping to glimpse the spot where reality was bending to fool her perception. "Some magician you are."

A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. "Indeed," he snorted, and she bit her lower lip in trying to suppress a giggle.

"So… I take it you'd like me to give it back?"

"Well, that would be good, yes," he affirmed, uncomfortably shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"And what if I'd rather keep it?" she queried, dazing him for a second.

He swallowed, and decided that he wouldn't put it past her. He'd gladly let her have it, but he already knew that it had to be in his possession for her to find it in the other world when she would most need to. "I could just take it, you know," he claimed, his voice taking on a snarky tone.

She considered this. "I'm sure you could," she pouted, and added pointedly, "But you wouldn't."

Quirking an eyebrow, he inquired, "What makes you think that I wouldn't?"

"If that had been your intent," she returned boldly, "you would have done so long ago."

"And… just what do you think is my intent?" he asked, moving around the bed, aware that she was noticing.

"I have no idea," she admitted, "though I'd love to find out."

He stopped beside her, and deliberated on that for a moment, taking in the smell of her perfume, the sunlight and roses on her skin, and almost feeling the warmth of her body as he sat down on the edge of her matrass and made a decision. He couldn't say what would happen when he began to raise his hood, and he dared not look up at her as he dropped it down his back.

_Whatever was he thinking?_

He was prepared for the worst, but was astounded when he felt her hand touching his face, caressing his cheek, and he finally ventured to meet her gaze. There was no fear and no darkness in her eyes, only beauty. Something prompted him to cast a quick glance at the mirror mounted on her dresser across the room. The reflection he saw there next to hers was that of the spinner. It was how she saw him, and it was what he saw through her eyes when she looked at him, as if by magic – his, hers, or a higher one. He leaned in to her touch, and eventually she gently cupped his face in both hands. He closed his eyes as she slowly bent forward and pressed her lips to his. His heart was pounding wildly in his throat, and he knew that this was wrong, _all wrong…_ but it was so good, so sweet, all of perfect… and he wanted it to last for as long as it could.

Before the spinner had reemerged, he'd never thought that he'd ever _kiss_ like this again, _hold_ someone in his arms again as he was holding her now, _love_ again as he loved her, and she was everything he'd ever wanted. He parted her lips with the tip of his tongue, and she tangled her fingers in his hair at the back of his head, forgetting the book, forgetting the world around her, just as he was, and he relished the taste of her in his mouth, sunlight and honeydew. Wrapping one arm around her waist, he drew her closer, tenderly probing, deepening and cherishing the intimacy of their embrace. He knew that this was her first kiss, and briefly wondered how she had gone _this long_ without being kissed… how _he_ had gone this long without kissing _her_.

But… he knew this was _all wrong… _

He had to make himself stop, and it almost hurt to pull back when he took her hands in his own and pressed his forehead to hers, telling himself that this was not how it was supposed to happen. He'd never seen this in her future. Perhaps he'd already upset the balance and was changing fate by being here too early, making Destiny choose to abandon him and send him down a path that would nullify everything he'd been doing…

Stroking the pads of his thumbs across her knuckles, he tried to get it all back together in his mind, but lost himself in her eyes when he opened his own, just long enough to be defeated by the urge to nuzzle her cheek and graze her lips one last time before he vanished.

When he was gone, she felt emptiness. Belle buried her mouth and nose in her hands, still tasting him on her lips and tongue, and she felt a pang of loss at his absence. She had no idea why she did, or how she could be drawn to him the way she was, but she was sure he was her future. Destiny wanted this, for whatever reason, and she knew there would be darkness and pain, but she was also very certain that she was the one who could take them both away from that. Opening the book that had slipped from her lap and onto the covers beside her at the first page, she discovered that his nimble hands had exchanged one volume for another at some stage in the past few minutes. The book she was now holding was the book he'd meant her to have.

The inscription inside read:

_For my beautiful Lady of Avonlea,_

_May your life be full of light and happiness_

_May you never walk alone_

_May Destiny lead you to your heart's desire_

_And your magic always be your own _

_Forever,_

_– R._


	10. Hope

_**Thank you very much for the feedback and helpful comments: Twyla Mercedes, NobodyToo, cynicsquest, belle, emospritelet, rumbeller25 and CJ Moliere! I really appreciate your encouragement and hope you have a good time with the newest chapter! I'm sorry I'm a bit slow at updating anything in general at the moment since I've got a lot on my plate right now, but tweaking off some time for this every now and then in the course of a week and knowing that you enjoy this little tale of darkness and light just makes my day!**_

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10. Hope

_Hope_ was for fools, he'd always thought. It was just short of faith and somewhere north of disbelief, right next to self-deceit on the worn and tattered map that most people kept in a chest full of secrets and heartaches at the back of the hidden closet that held the tale of their lives. Hope was a very human feeling, and it was generally born of fear and pain. He hadn't been entirely human in a while, but he did remember hope and where he'd stored it, once upon a time. The spinner had used up nearly all of what he'd had by the time the soldiers had come for his boy, and since doubt was much less resilient and easier to handle, the Dark One had generally resorted to distrust for the better part of his existence.

Recently, since the spinner had begun to resurface, the Dark One had felt himself rather more willing to face and deal with fear and pain than he had been for some time. The spinner would always have chosen hope over doubt before his hope had all but run out. He seemed quite adamant in the confidence that taking a risk for Belle was a worthwhile endeavor because she was _entirely_ worthwhile. In her presence, the sorcerer found himself inclined towards the hope that Destiny was somehow showing faith in him by entrusting her to him, and he was also very much committed to the hope he knew she would be placing in him in the near future. _Of course_ he was going to prevent anything from happening to her – how could he not? He was getting Bae back, because he'd _seen_ it, that much was for sure, and he'd done everything in his power to make that dream come true. Belle was a part of the puzzle and a part of the same dream; she was _hope_ itself, and he wasn't letting her out of his sight ever again once she'd become his wife. He _knew_ not to, simple as that, so why should he not be able to protect her?

He felt almost at peace with himself, riding on the back of the winterdragon with a mild spring breeze in his face. They were coursing through clear blue skies on the promise of a warm day, and he'd definitely recovered that map and dusted off _hope_: it grew with each and every passing day.

His heart jumped into his throat when he got an image of her coming towards him in what looked like an old, abandoned common baking house on a full moon night a little over thirty-five years from now. Somehow he knew that she'd made use of Jefferson's book to cross realms just to be with him, and he saw his future-self gently place a hand on her swollen belly, full of hope for their future, although they were really worlds apart. He could have sworn he'd felt their baby move, and he smiled as he allowed his mind to slip completely inside the sorcerer's. He let the moment wash over him, filling him to the brim with wonder and happiness; their child would be born soon, and they would be together. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that they would find their way, and he kissed her tenderly, sliding his arm around her waist and pulling her to him as closely as he could with their child, with their _hope_ between them.

He loved the way she would rake her fingers through his hair and mold her body to his, and the strange weariness he'd felt before evaporated and fell away. The sorcerer had spent the day in the saddle, and he'd been remarkably stiff and tired when he'd roused himself up off the floor by the door. The Dark One thought that he might be getting old, which was a curious and unsettling, if transient state of being for him to experience like this through his alter-ego's perceptions. However, he was very certain that the sorcerer in the bread house was not too old to appreciate what his wife was doing with him when she pushed the dragonskin coat over his shoulders and let it drop to the floor behind him.

He hadn't seen her in weeks, and he'd missed her too much for words, but she was here now, and he had no need for words. He reveled in the sweet scent of her skin and hair, the soft pressure and taste of her lips on his mouth. He submersed himself in the familiar warmth of her very essence as he kissed her, and took in whatever he could of her, savoring every second of the time they had together, because they'd only have tonight. There was no way of telling when he'd be with her again.

He heard her say that she loved him as he trailed kisses down her neck and slid his hands underneath her tank top, but the vision began to fade when he the dragon started his ascent in search of a place to land, and he had no idea how he was going to get through the next months, or even days without her. He didn't understand how it was possible to miss someone this badly and almost fell into the grass as he scrambled to the ground near the towering ruins of a castle that had already been in decay when he was a boy.

Onerously, he tried to concentrate on the here and now and returned his attention to the problem at hand. He really didn't have a clue where to start looking for the wolf Jefferson had described, but he'd thought of someone who might, and he was paying her another visit this morning.

Maleficent was one of the oldest living fairies he knew of, and nothing unnatural came to pass in this world without her catching whiff of it. She had eyes and ears everywhere, and she was in touch with this earth and her surroundings more than any of her sisters, whose company she snubbed. The centuries, if not millennia of solitude that she'd spent guarding her moors and guarding her heart hadn't been particularly beneficial to the development of her social competence in that respect, he mused, gazing at the vestiges of the stronghold his father had told him stories about many lifetimes ago.

Legends claimed that a king had built it for his true love. He'd told her that the beautiful palace of stone and glass would stand for all eternity, as his love for her would. They had been happy there together, but as the years went by, the king had aged and passed away, and she had stayed young and lived: such was the curse of her magic and the nature of her being.

The sorcerer knew that she inhabited these walls even still, watching them crumble and growing ever more bitter and lonely, striking out at Fate wherever she found it to be favorable towards young love and other people's dreams. Maleficent's own hopes and dreams had died a long, long time ago, and the sands of eons had buried every trace of the inspiration that had built this castle beneath them.

He'd finally sealed her in last time he'd been here; a spell he'd deemed necessary to contain her virulence, which had greatly increased since Regina had started infesting her mind. Malevolence rubbed off, it seemed, and this rotting monument to mortality had become like a petri dish for breeding hate. Not that the Evil Queen had any kind of real affection for Maleficent; she'd merely decided to leech on the fallen fairy's knowledge and advice when the Dark One had turned away from his protégé, realizing that he'd created a monster.

_Whatever had he been thinking?_ She was Cora's daughter, after all. He wasn't at all sure if she even had what it took to cast the Dark Curse anymore; she might be lacking its most important ingredient by now, because he couldn't think that there was a heart left she'd hold dear.

Rumpelstiltskin absently patted the dragon's muzzle, and Anam snorted contently as he watched the sorcerer make his way towards the magical barrier on the broken main gate. It emitted a dull, humming sound that only the magician and the dragon could hear when he passed through it and entered the inner courtyard, and he took note that it had been breached.

The courtyard was terraced to suit the steep, sloping hillside it was fitted to, and an excellent master-builder had constructed several low-walled paths that each led to different parts of the split-level complex. He thought that this must have been a breathtaking dream of architecture when it had been new, and headed straight for a wide flight of steps that ran up to the massive arched doorway opening inwards to the great hall. It was the only part of the castle that was still fully intact, and it was as an impressive a sight as it been the day it was finished. Its staggering rib vaulted ceiling loomed high above a dark, granite-tiled floor, and the anthracite-colored facing stones on the wall opposite the high gothic stained glass windows facing west to catch the evening sun had been arranged in patterns that must have cost a hundred laborers months of their lives to complete.

"You never knock, do you?" Maleficent inquired dryly as he strode towards the two women seated by the fireplace. They'd been locked in conversation about Snow White and some sleeping curse or other; two Wicked Witches swapping lethal recipes, make-up and fashion tips and discussing the newest Shades of Grey, no doubt. It was always chilly in here, he thought, shuddering, but it was not the building or the season.

"Your knocker is broken," he replied, and watched her shift uncomfortably. "This place is falling down around you, dearie; you should really get some help. Anybody could just walk in."

Regina looked up at him, slowly fixing her cold gaze to his, that unpleasant smile of hers plastered to her lips without so much as touching her eyes. "_Anybody_ just did," she remarked snidely, and Maleficent raised an eyebrow at her friend's temerity.

"You should be more picky about the company you keep," he told the fairy, pointedly ignoring the Evil Queen, and Maleficent smirked, tapping her fingers against the armrest of the high leather backed chair she was sitting on.

"Well, I haven't had much choice in the company I keep, have I? I've been locked in here for days," she returned, and cast a sideways look at Regina, who was starting to be mildly amused. "No offence, dear."

Shooting Regina a crooked grin, he realized that Maleficent hadn't caught on that the fact that Regina being here in and on itself meant that she would know how to lift the spell he'd put on these ruins. If she'd been able to get _in_, she could certainly have dissolved the wards to get Maleficent _out_. Maleficent wasn't very bright; wisdom didn't automatically come with the field, he thought, and briefly pondered how Regina always managed to dismember his protective enchantments. There was just no way to keep that woman out of his castle - or any other, for that matter - and it bothered him. Especially now. He'd been playing with the thought of cooking up a potion that would bind her magic for some time now, but the trouble was that he still needed the Evil Queen to crash a wedding in a little while. Perhaps in a year or so – he couldn't name an exact date, because Prince Charming actually hadn't quite made up his mind just yet.

"_A_ day," he corrected her, raising a finger. "And _someone_ has to make sure you don't overplay," he stated indulgently, folding his arms across his chest as he returned his attention to the fairy. "You've been tipping the balance of Destiny quite excessively lately, and Sleeping Beauty needs to awaken, so I think a little time-out on the quiet chair will do you some good."

He could see that she was seething and was enjoying himself immensely as Regina crossed her legs in his direction and rested her hand on her chin, looking back and forth between them.

Maleficent's chest heaved as she fought for countenance before speaking, but she managed to sound quite collected under the circumstances, considering the way she had screamed and ranted at him for imprisoning her in her own home less than twenty-four hours ago.

"Cut the crap, Rumple, what do you want from me?" she spat.

"A little information," he answered truthfully, and wished Regina would just vanish in a puff of black smoke in her usual intimidating fashion, and perhaps reappear in a puddle of something vile and despicable in the moors that surrounded the castle perimeter for miles in every direction.

"Regarding what?" Maleficent probed, leaning forward, and Regina raised her chin, just as interested in what the Dark One could possibly mean as the fallen fairy was.

He exhaled, looking at the Evil Queen, and remained silent. Awkward seconds passed.

"Oh, alright," she finally snapped at him, rolling her eyes, and got to her feet. Turning to Maleficent, she said, "I'm so sorry I couldn't undo the wards for you. But we will need to continue this conversation, because I think you'll be interested in what I have to offer. I'll come by again soon."

The sorcerer marveled at Regina's audacity as she stalked from the room and left her 'friend' in the firm belief that she couldn't help her out of her present predicament, and bit his tongue lest it slip, stifling a chuckle. It did have something comically entertaining, and he couldn't wait to see where she was going with this. Perhaps he would steal a march on her, though, depending on what the fairy had to say, and just to see what might happen.

Maleficent looked as though she'd swallowed a fly when he flung himself into the chair opposite her, tenting his fingers.

"Well?" she asked impatiently.

"A little something other besides yourself has been upsetting the balance here for a few days," he explained. "A _creature _from another world, it seems."

There was nothing in her expression to tell him whether or not she knew what he was talking about, and he couldn't look into her mind, so he continued. "A Traveler brought back… _something_ through a portal, and it escaped into the forest."

"I heard of that," she admitted, and he could tell there was more.

"It was a wolf," he went on, inclining his head, and she looked into the fire, losing herself in the blaze. He settled back in his chair and waited.

"That wasn't a wolf. And she's not from that other dimension… she's from here." Malifecent paused, and he got the impression that she was searching for a very old memory he wasn't going to like. He was right. "She and her own will bring about death to your family. You will need to find a way to stop her," the fallen fairy finally went on. He froze in his posture, and his stomach lurched.

Trying to sound casual and minding his eyes when she returned her gaze to his face, he queried, "And… you know this _how_?"

"There is a prophesy," she told him, "Every Ancient knows that someday the wolves will return. Starting with _her_, but there will be thousands. The Gatekeepers will gather to open the Rift…" Her voice trailed off again.

"Go on," he encouraged her, but a slow smile spread across her face, and her eyes narrowed at his request.

"Why should I?" she returned, dragging out the vowels provocatively.

Leaning forward, there was darkness in his eyes as he bared his teeth and hissed: "Because I would turn you into a blindworm and dissect you just to see you squirm."

She didn't flinch at this, but he was satisfied when he finally smelled fear. "Now," he began, settling in again, "let's try this one more time, a bit friendlier, since we do have so much in common, and I would be willing to take down the wards on your word that you'll keep your hands off that comatose princess in the tower. I've a job for that enthusiastic hero who's about to save her, and he will need incentive. _Live_ incentive."

The fallen fairy drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly, and one cup of wine appeared in her hand, and another on the armrest of the Dark One's chair.

"Bottoms up," she sighed, raising it, "This is going to take a moment."

The Dark One held the goblet to his lips and sniffed distrustfully, and she quirked an eyebrow at him when he took a sip, swirling it around in his mouth briefly before he swallowed. "I'm all ears," he said, and she began talking.

By the time he left, the Evil Queen was starting to get bored out in the courtyard by the remnants of the pillar she'd been hiding behind. He didn't register her presence, though he normally would, because there was so much going around in his head as he passed through the gate. He barely remembered to stop and break the enchantment by raising both his hands to his chest, elbows outwards, and pulling a hole in the energy-field with his fingers. It disintegrated as he dragged his hands apart, and he walked out to meet the winterdragon, who became visible again just as he climbed onto his back, mumbling his thanks and apologizing for the long delay.

Regina waited until he was out of sight and strode towards the gate unhurriedly, deliberating, before she reinstalled the wards he'd just dissolved, smiling that unpleasant smile of hers that never reached her eyes. Then, she left, laughing at the thought of Maleficent's face when she discovered that the Dark One had broken his word.

The sorcerer slouched over, feeling oddly weary and confused as the dragon rose into the air, and it was all the beast could do to keep his mind from being sucked into the funneling torrent of his rider's racing thoughts. He began thrumming his melody, soothing the chaos and the helplessness he felt seeping through his skin from the magician who was reaching out for something to hold on to. It burned and stung, eating its way into his very core, and he gritted his teeth against the grief, but all at once, his head started to fill with images from the Dark One's recollections. The unexpected force of their impact almost sent him plummeting to the ground when the spinner reemerged, and both man and dragon began to breathe a little easier, slowly regaining control.

"I'm sorry, my friend," the spinner told him, stroking his neck, "but I'm going to need your help, and it's going to be a lot to ask." He waited for a moment and listened for the dragon's response. "Are you sure? Are you sure can take all of it?" he said, and the dragon snorted a huff of smoke ahead of them, sending a murmur of reassurance at him. Then, the sorcerer closed his eyes and placed his hands palms downward on the dragon's back. He began accessing and shuffling over every last one of the memories he'd collected in the years of his exceptionally long life for the winterdragon to keep safe for him, because the time would come when he'd need them back, should he ever forget what he'd just heard.

Whatever else remained, though, _hope_ would prevail, the spinner was sure, and held it up like a beacon in the night as he pictured Belle's face, knowing what he did.


	11. A Prologue to Faith: Betrayal

_**Thank you everybody who followed and favorited! Loved your comments and reviews: NobodyToo, emospritelet, cyicsquest (especially you for making me think and for checking my spellings), CJ Moliere, belle, Twyla Mercedes, AquaJasmine23 and dullhouse - thank you!**_

_**dullhouse: wait and see - "the future is not always what it seems..."**_

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11. A Prologue to Faith: Betrayal

_Betrayal_ is something only people who are really close to you are capable of. You don't have many expectations where strangers are concerned, so when a stranger steals from you, lies to you or does you harm, you feel hurt, get angry, and either you get over it or you don't, depending on the extent of the damage, but you don't feel _betrayed_. You feel _betrayed_ when someone you _trust_ abuses the faith you have placed in them, and turns his back on you while you're still lying in a pool of your own blood and snot, asking yourself _why_. Since _betrayal_ almost always matures under your very nose without you noticing it, much like a weed in your garden that you'd swear wasn't there yesterday, it could almost be said that it has got a certain kind of dark magic to it: it's odorless, silent, and invisible until it finds you weak enough to eat a hole your soul. Either that, or you'd have to ask yourself how _trust_ could have made you so blind.

The sorcerer could no longer see Belle. He was oblivious to the fact, since he had been quite busy that particular day digesting what he'd learned from the fallen fairy and thinking how he was going to play the new set of cards he'd been dealt. He tended to rely on his gut feeling, but his instincts were not telling him anything out of the ordinary now because they were simply not alerted. If he had seen the packs of vicious, ghostly timbrewolves pouring in through the open gates of the outer defensive walls of Avonlea, snarling and clawing their way towards the inner wards, he would have known that his protective enchantments had been dismantled, and he would have come for her. He would have searched for Belle and taken her away from the slaughter that ensued. But he just didn't see it coming.

With the force of a deadly tsunami, close to a hundred of the monstrous, merciless killing machines made their way through the courtyard towards the main building and into the entrance hall that stood just as wide open as the gates had. The huge, terrifying creatures with their blazing green eyes tore right through any unsuspecting man, woman or child that got in their way. Human bodies littered the cobble stone enclosure around the well and the stables, and the palace guards soon lay dead or dying all over the ground floor of the castle.

Belle was halfway down the main staircase leading to the second floor when she realized they were being overrun. She'd heard screams and shouting, and the bell was being tolled, so she knew they were under attack. Quickly realizing that there was no way out, she sprinted back up to her room and bolted the door though she was sure it would not hold as she backed away from it and into the darkness, trapping herself inside. The Duke was off on a spontaneous hunting trip. De Frimeur had talked him into it the previous day, and they'd left together very early that morning. Maurice would certainly not be back until the next day, he'd told her when he'd said goodbye, and she'd had the strangest feeling then… It was clear that she would not live to see him again if she stayed here, and she knew she'd have to think of something. Fast.

What sprang to mind almost immediately seemed quite impossible because she'd never done it before; not in her wildest dreams had she imagined that she ever would. It was probably the only thing that would save her now though, so she hastily unfolded a parchment she'd been carrying around with her since the night before. Her fingers trembled uncontrollably as she roughly smoothed down the creases and tried to determine which way was up. She'd have no choice but to follow the instructions she'd copied down from the sorcerer's book – the one on portals he hadn't meant for her to have.

She could hear growling, scraping, and loud, banging, thumping and splintering noises from the corridor as teeth and claws ripped through carpets, tapestry and furniture. It was a matter of seconds rather than minutes before they'd come through, she thought, and bent down over the small reading table by the window. By the light of the solitary ocher-colored ozokerite candle she'd left burning earlier, before hell had broken loose, her eyes ran over the sequences she'd have to try to work, memorizing each step. Then, she hurriedly retrieved one of the leather volumes the spinner had given her for her birthday from the shelf by her bed to use as an anchor. Clutching it to her middle, she softly mumbled the progression of images she'd have to keep in mind while she was in the intermediate space between two places so that she would not get lost. Since the book had once belonged to the sorcerer, she assumed that it would connect her to him, just as described in the one she should never have read. Closing her eyes, she tried to picture the Dark One, but at that moment, the wooden panel of the door shattered behind her, distracting her. The last waning impression she had of that moment was of the wolves that were coming straight at her, and it muddled the sequence she was desperately trying to revise and recall as she fell into the white static of her first own traverse.

Two of the ferocious creatures that launched themselves at her, all jaws and coppery stench of blood clotting on their coarse fur, fell through her fading shape, barely touching the golden haze that enshrouded her an instant before she vanished. Both of them crashed through the window pane behind her, yelping as they hurled to the ground below, hips, skulls and backbones cracking on impact.

Up until then, Belle didn't know that she had been betrayed, but when she rematerialized just outside the castle grounds and found herself facing Sir Gaston de Frimeur talking quietly to a wolf that was just taking on the shape of a honey-blonde woman in her mid-thirties, the first thought that formed in her head was that teleporting had messed with her perception. Wolves did not change into women, and Gaston did not consult with wolves that changed into women – he was, after all, on a hunting trip with her father... But it _was_ Gaston she was looking at – the man whom her father had placed all his faith and hope in during these past years.

The expression on his face told her that what she was witnessing was her reality in the Enchanted Forest, and that reality was falling apart around her. She felt as though she'd been tarred and feathered, and she was suddenly surrounded by half a dozen of the same kind of snarling beasts that were wiping out Avonlea. She presumed that the shape-shifter commanded them when the blonde woman called them down and they obeyed. Belle was beyond scared, and her mind was racing.

"Well, would you look at that," the blonde drawled, her eyes widening gleefully, and Belle shuddered as Gaston tried to avoid looking at her. He shuffled about uneasily and was visibly unsettled when the woman he obviously knew quite well studied him briefly, letting her eyes roam over his body in a most unseemly manner. "You were right, my pet, the girl does have magic," she said, smiling smugly, and he looked at his feet. "Bad influences, I'd say."

Belle wanted to ask him _why_, but she couldn't – the words just wouldn't come out of her mouth, and she stood very still, staring at him in shock. He'd sold her out, sold Avonlea out. She briefly wondered if her father was alright and plucked up the courage to ask him shakily. "Gaston, where is the Duke?"

When he remained silent, she started to get angry. "What have you done to him?" she demanded much more firmly, and his face darkened.

"It's him I'm doing this for, you stupid wench," he said, his voice low and spiteful when he finally met her gaze. "You've brought nothing but misfortune over Avonlea, and this is going to end right here. You and everybody who's been helping keep your secret is going to die."

Still smiling, the shape-shifter clapped her hands in delight. "What a wonderful coincidence that I just happened to be around to help with that," she said sweetly, scratching her favorite wolf's head in calming it as she drew closer to Belle. Waving at de Frimeur, she dismissed him curtly, and he gladly took his leave, mounted the horse he'd tethered to one of the low branches nearby, and sped off into the night. He didn't even look back.

"I've heard a lot about you, _Milady of Avonlea_," the woman went on, and there was a malicious, mocking tone in her melodious voice as she conjured a blue bolt of energy in the palms of her hands, turning it this way and that playfully, charging up its potency with her magic. Dark shadow lines formed under the skin of her temples and cheeks, squirming, winding and crawling towards her eyes and turning them into bottomless, cold pits of black hate and cruel insanity.

Belle's heart pounded wildly in her throat. She had never seen this kind of ravenous loathing in any one person before, and the muscles in her neck tensed.

"The Hatter was right – you're the one," the blonde continued, her face but a mere imitation of human expression anymore. "Pity you won't be around to fulfill that grand destiny of yours."

Just as she was about to unleash her fury at Belle, Belle dipped her head, hunched her shoulders and instinctively shielded herself, still hugging the book to her. She had no idea what she was doing, but the force-field she created was the rich, golden color of her magic, and it deflected the lethal blue light the shifter had shot at her, sending it right back quite unexpectedly. The energy bolt hit the evil fairy point blank, knocking the wind out of her lungs, and she tumbled backwards.

Belle wasn't sure why she'd ended up here in the first place – maybe Gaston talking to this vile witch was something she'd been destined to see – but she knew that she had to get away from her, because she was already recovering and regaining her feet, and she did not look amused.

She envisioned the one place she'd always felt safe, and the feeling of being in the spinner's arms opened the right gateway as she vanished from sight before the shape-shifter could do anything about it. The bitter taste of betrayal, however, rose acidly in her throat.

XXXxxxXXX

Few things could be as painful as having to admit that he'd been deceiving himself, he thought as he stood at his work-bench in the tower room, sorting through the final ingredients he needed for his potion. He'd arrived at a point in his life when he could acknowledge that he'd been his own worst enemy for the better part of the last three hundred years, but even so: there was hope yet. He knew that Belle was his destiny, just as he was hers, and he would do anything for her. He would die for her.

The sorcerer measured some cayenne and a few crushed aniseeds into the mixture he was creating, added some essence of valerian root, and waited patiently for the liquid in the glass tube to clear as he swirled it around. Inspecting the result closely, he poured it into two small flagons and corked them, hoping that he'd have no need of them. Sleep was hard to come by when you'd spent centuries betraying yourself, and while Belle would be out like a light and well protected when he worked the spell he'd been trying to figure out all afternoon, he doubted that this concoction would even touch him if all was to go wrong, and he'd be walking his road alone. As he always had. He'd do it gladly this time though, if it would do any good, but he couldn't tell, and that was the hardest part.

He glanced out of the open window when he heard footsteps on the gravel outside in the courtyard and saw that Jefferson was back. The Hatter had been gone longer than he'd said he would, and it was getting dark. Rumpelstiltskin was annoyed with the young man because he'd lost them a lot of time today by not sticking to the plan. Since the shape-shifter they were looking for was a very powerful Ancient, he had no intention of putting them both at risk by going after her at night, when Darkness was at its most powerful. Maleficent had given him a pretty good idea of how to locate the evil fairy, and he had hoped to get this over with as soon as possible; the faster they dealt with her, the better they could contain the damage. Even if the Hall of Mirrors was still sealed and the whereabouts of the scrolls were undisclosed as yet, it wouldn't take Morrigan long to work out how to get what she was after and she might even go after Belle if she found out about her. He sighed and he started clearing away the set-up from the workbench, pocketing the flagons.

"Back already?" he inquired sarcastically when the door swung back on its hinges, and the Hatter smiled apologetically as he came in.

"I'm sorry, I lost track of time," the younger man admitted. "It was hard to leave Grace." He glimpsed the book on the sorcerer's desk and his eyebrows twitched.

The spinner thought that the Traveler was doing well to leave his infant daughter with his neighbor's wife, who was nursing a child of her own; he could hardly have cared for the baby himself at the moment, so she was better off this way. They all were, though he could tell that Jefferson was pining for his little girl. That was something the spinner could relate to.

"I see you've managed to retrieve it," the Hatter remarked, changing the subject by tapping his fingers on the cover of the book the sorcerer had brought back from Avonlea the night before. Rumpelstiltskin nodded.

"I have," he replied wistfully, and unconsciously touched the pads of his fingers to his lips, remembering the kiss he'd shared with Belle; that perfect, wonderful kiss… holding her… feeling her warmth in his heart. He smiled slightly, and a part of him wished that this had been another time, and that Belle had been someone else, anyone else but who she was. "Indeed I have."

The Hatter picked up the tome, too preoccupied to take notice of the absent look about the sorcerer's eyes. "And… did someone have die, or did you manage to show some restraint?" he scoffed, grinning wryly.

Rumpelstiltskin's brow furrowed, but he decided to ignore his young friend's insolent remark. "Just have it back to me as soon as you can," he said, and suddenly shivered, as though he'd caught a draft. All at once, he noticed that the Hatter's smirk had vanished, and the man wasn't looking at him anymore at all; he'd dropped the book and was staring past his shoulder, wide-eyed in astonishment. The Dark One spun around, alarmed and ready to fling a fireball at whoever had appeared in the room with them.

His mouth fell open, and an avalanche of despair came crashing down on him when he saw Belle standing there miserably, clutching a book, and he couldn't think of a thing to say. _Magic_, he thought, she'd used _magic_, though she never should have been able to access her powers yet. It was too early, and there was no telling what consequences this would have for either one of them. The puzzle was falling apart, and it was his very own doing – he'd been walking a fine line, deceiving himself, deceiving her, and this was the outcome…

She seemed just as shocked to be here as the two men gaping at her were at her sudden arrival, and he briefly registered that she'd taken in his appearance and was scanning the room hectically. He had to get a grip, he told himself, and he tried to take slow breaths and keep calm, so that he could perhaps calm her when she started screaming, which he half expected her to do any second now.

Turning back to the Hatter he told him curtly to leave, but Jefferson hesitated, glancing at the book he'd been meaning to burn, cold sweat beading on his forehead. It was sitting there right in front of him, taunting him, and the young man was sure there would be hell to pay, because not only was Belle not dead, but she had been the one Rumpelstiltskin had given the book to. She probably had all of them, he realized, his eyes darting back and forth between the one on the desk and the one she was holding. He could grab the one on the desk now and go, maybe destroy it and salvage some of this mess. He'd pick up Grace and disappear somewhere… but she would find him, she'd told him, she would find him _anywhere_ if he crossed her. Morrigan had promised him to return Madeline to the Enchanted World for the information that he had given her, but he was sure that this deal was off now. In his heart, he knew he'd been fooling himself when he'd tried to tell himself that he could pull this off without ever looking back. He'd sold the Dark One and the first of the Guardians off to the wolves for nothing, because now that Belle was here and had her magic, Destiny was about to change.

The book at his fingertips was a testament to his betrayal, so when Rumpelstiltskin repeated his request that he leave them from between his teeth in a low growl, Jefferson abandoned it on the edge of the desk, lest it scald him if he ever touched it again. He made haste to shut the door behind himself as he went, and once outside in the narrow stairwell, he leaned his brow against the cool wooden panel and tried to steady himself. He registered a thump from within the room as the book fell to the floor, and he cursed the day he'd started working on it, even though he'd recognized the parchment inside the leather binding for what it was the second he'd laid his hands on it. The magic of ages untold had jerked through his body and reminded him of the things his ancestors had known – but he was only a hatter, and life was as hard in this world as in any other, and _betrayal_ always grew within plain sight.


	12. Faith

_**As always, thank you to my wonderful reviewers: Twyla Mercedes, Aquajasmine23, cynicsquest, belle, Snow23, emospritelet and dullhouse - love the feedback, it makes me enjoy thinking about this story all the more as I write it! **_

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12. Faith

_Faith_, the sorcerer thought as he stood quietly watching Belle in the tower room, was the one thing he'd never quite managed to hold on to in all the years of exceptionally long life. It was elusive now more than ever; there were a thousand reasons to believe and not a single reason to doubt, but he was struggling to retain his composure. Panic welled inside him. He was at a total loss; she was here, and he guessed that he had missed a very crucial event in her life some time within the last hours because her magic had been triggered, or she would not have come. He'd never be able to see her future again – or _their_ future, for that matter, and he felt like a blind man groping about in the shadowy haze of residual eyesight, and that was more horrifying than he'd ever anticipated, even though he'd known that this moment would come. Belle was looking at him with a curious mixture of fear and hope. He supposed it was something along the line of faith, but he didn't know what to make of it. He didn't know what to say because it wasn't just dark where he was heading now, where _they_ were heading now – it was pitch black. The countdown had begun.

_Faith_, he thought, _he needed faith_... but the capacity for faith was a human aptitude, and he wasn't human and never would be ever again. He was a _monster_, a _thing_ she would most probably rather run from than find herself facing at this moment; she _must_ have been expecting to see someone else altogether when she'd opened that portal for herself, and he was convinced that she wouldn't be here if she'd known. The spinner, whom she would have been counting on, had certainly had faith at times, and he would have had faith in her... but then, the spinner had believed in _so_ many things…

As a little boy, he'd believed in his father – until his father had abandoned him. After that, there had been moments when he hadn't believed in _anything_ anymore. Not until he'd learned to rely on himself and trust in the talents he'd been gifted. The fact that he had indeed been _gifted_ them, and that nothing in this world or any other happened without a reason had only dawned on him so much later, but he'd had _faith_, and he'd used his abilities to shape a life for himself.

He'd married a beautiful woman and fathered a son. He'd earned his living, and he would have been content there in the house that he'd built for them for the rest of his days, but his faith had been shattered again when Milah had left him. Even at this point he'd had _hope _nonetheless_, _and he'd held on to it for dear life. It, too, seemed to have abandoned him though, when he discovered that with all of the Dark One's power, he still hadn't grown strong or courageous enough to give it back when he had the chance: he could have followed his son through the magic bean portal to that other world and started over but he hadn't been willing to make that choice. Since then, not a day had gone by when he hadn't regretted it. He didn't want to keep making the same mistakes – he didn't want to keep _regretting _what he did and did not do, especially where Belle was concerned, but he was ever so hard up for _faith_.

She was shaken, he could feel that about her distinctly, but looking at her, he soon discovered that this had nothing to do with him or his appearance. He was astonished that she was still so outwardly collected standing here, looking back at him – but maybe she was just guarding herself better than he could. Whatever he said now and whatever he did, he knew she was depending on him, and his biggest worry would not be ducking out on his own fears. This wasn't just about _him_. It had _never_ been just about him, and learning that had cost him centuries, so he'd just simply have to get his act together, he realized.

The Lady of Avonlea wasn't here for a social call or out of simple curiosity; she was here because their paths had crossed, and their lives had touched, and she obviously _needed_ him, as he'd known she would. His own insecurities suddenly became totally and utterly obsolete, and he decided to take a leap of faith and open his heart and his mind to the most unpredictable intruder he'd ever felt in there. This seemingly so delicate Beauty had thrown all caution to the wind and come to him, invading his castle and his _darkness_, been met with the Beast, and her _faith_ was still intact, so he'd rather kill the Beast than see the wind take a single petal off his rose, his _hope_, his _love_.

"How did you get here?" he finally asked, and cringed the instant he became aware of the absurdity of his question. They both knew full well how she'd gotten here; he just couldn't see what could have driven her, and that was far more important – everything else was beside the point.

She took a step towards him then, unexpectedly, and he tensed up and backed away instinctively, as though the trust she was placing in him was a weapon held to his throat. Nasty old habit, he thought, cringing again when she hesitated. He had no problem getting close to anyone physically as long as he was in complete control, but he most certainly wasn't in control at present, and that was new for him.

"I used one of the Travelling spells in the book," she replied unsteadily, blushing, and moved around him slowly and cautiously to pick Jefferson's journal up off the floor without knowing why she was doing this. Offering it to him as she straightened, she fixed her gaze to his firmly, but she didn't let go of the leather volume when he accepted it.

"It's all about feeling and embracing the essence of the anchor," she continued barely above a whisper, and he kept hold of the tome, aware of the contact they were sharing through it because he could feel the slightest tingle of a magic current coursing through the matter.

"And now you wish you'd had a different fixpoint," he mumbled, his voice low and unpretentious.

"Why would I?" she returned softly, leaving the book to him so she could swiftly wipe away a single stray tear that tracked down her cheek. She blinked up at the ceiling as she did, and then hugged herself awkwardly for lack of anything else to cling to, glancing back at him. "It's you – it's _you_ I pictured and it's _your_ help I'm hoping for," she told him, and he believed her.

He wanted to pull her to him and wrap his arms around her, but held back. He dared not touch her; she was so fragile… he was afraid she might break, and if she broke, then he would break too.

Tossing the confounded book back on the desk carelessly without looking where it was going, he briefly closed his eyes and habitually rubbed them with the fingers and thumb of one hand, tentatively trying to probe inside her mind for anything helpful, but, of course, he came up blank.

"What's going on?" he asked her after a few seconds of digesting and dealing with the full extent of his helplessness. "What happened in Avonlea, Belle?"

Her lower lip quivered, and she squeezed her eyes closed in trying to hold back all of what wanted out, but the images of the past hour came flooding back and spilled over. She covered her eyes, and he could feel both her discomfiture at showing him this side of her, as well as the anguish she experienced at what had transpired to make her leave her father's castle.

He took a deep breath and grasped her shoulder ever so gently, ready to draw back his hand, and warily keeping a distance between them in case he should sense that this gesture was too much, was unrequired, possibly unwanted. She surprised him again though, and responded to his measured attempt at offering some comfort by closing the gap between them and leaning in to him, burying her face in the crook of his neck. He hummed softly, enfolded her tenderly in his arms, and rested his cheek against hers, stroking her hair soothingly as she wept without making a sound before she was ready to explain.

XXXxxxXXX

Silently, the Hatter made his way across the inner courtyard. His head felt as though it was going to burst, and his stomach was churning. He had no idea what he was going to do, but he had to get away from here. He couldn't ever face Rumpelstiltskin again, he thought, though the most sensible thing would doubtlessly have been to admit what he'd done and warn the sorcerer; he didn't stand a chance against Morrigan, and he was deeply ashamed, couldn't own up to the sorcerer after he'd been listening at the door just long enough to hear what Belle had to say – he just couldn't.

A figure moved out of the shadows and blocked his way just as he'd reached the gate. He recognized the Blue Fairy in her human form, and his breath caught as she smiled at him benevolently. There was a gleam in her eye that told him she knew exactly what he'd been up to. She always did. He'd finally died and gone to hell, he supposed, and looked around anxiously. They were alone, and his throat went dry.

"I'm not going to harm you, Hatter," she said sweetly, taking in his perturbation. "I just want to talk to you."

"I – I don't know that we'd have anything to discuss," he returned, his arms down by his sides, fists clenched and ready to bolt – not that he'd had any idea where to. There wasn't anywhere left, truth be told, that he could go anymore.

"Oh, let's not play pretend here," she stated, crossing her arms. "You have been opening portals to other worlds all over the place."

_Was that all?_ he thought, and heaved an inward sigh of relief. Perhaps she wasn't aware of the extent of the damage he'd caused just yet, and that would at least buy him a few hours head start. "I don't have to answer to you," he mumbled, and circled around her, but she stopped him in his tracks.

"Wrong again," she admonished, jabbing a finger at the ground. "You are a _fairy_, and as such, you –"

"Since when?" he interrupted her tersely, thinking of both times he'd asked for her help and she'd sent him away, half-blood that he was; _human_ problems called for _human_ solutions, she'd told him. "I was never good enough for your kind," he spat, and felt nothing but contempt for her. She called herself the queen of fairies, but there was nothing remotely noble about her. Not to him, whose mother she had abandoned for loving a human man and having him. Blue had never considered him worthy of her attention before, and he would not bow to her now. He'd rather die than let that stand. "You never let me join in your little organization, and the only person who'd teach me to use my Talent to help myself just happens to be the magician you most despise."

"Next thing you'll be telling me is that I drove you into his arms," she chortled amusedly, antagonizing him even more. "Come _on_, we _are_ talking about the _Dark_ _One_ here, Jefferson… But while we're at it, you have _not_ exactly been a very loyal student to him, have you?"

His exasperation evaporated at that, and he briefly cast a glance at his feet before raising his eyes to meet hers defeatedly, his lips narrow and the taste of bile in his mouth.

"Avonlea has fallen to the wolves," she informed him smugly, but he'd guessed as much. "Most of the ancient transcripts that were stolen from me were found there. They'd been stitched into leather bookbindings to conceal what they really are, I've been told. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Hatter?"

Jefferson shuffled about uneasily, thinking.

"Well?" she insisted harshly, and he slowly shook his head. "You were helping _him, _then?" she suggested, and he suddenly felt defensive of the sorcerer.

"Rumpelstiltskin didn't know," he said hoarsely, "He had no idea what those books were, and neither did I, at first. They were a part of collection he bargained for when I was still a boy."

"But _he_ did know enough to give them to the Guardian…" she whispered, her face going blank for a second, before it dawned on her. "And… the Guardian… she's here, isn't she?"

His nod was barely discernible, and he could see she was seething underneath that calm outward surface.

"Then this is probably the first place Morrigan will start looking for her – and the rest of the scrolls."

Jefferson sighed, thinking that she could scratch _probably_, since he knew for sure that Morrigan wouldn't be long. He wanted nothing more than to be gone when she arrived.

"Were you going to skip out on your friend?" Blue inquired then, as though she could read his thoughts, but he was sure she couldn't.

His brow crinkled, and raising an eyebrow he straightened his back. "I thought you wanted the Guardian dead," he ascertained, deciding to ignore the question and change the focus of their conversation.

"Preferably," she returned, a much lighter tone to her voice that didn't fit the subject matter at all. But then again, nothing she'd ever said to him fit the way she'd said it, the Hatter thought, and his loathing of her increased with each passing minute.

"I doubt that would convince Rumpelstiltskin to aid me in dealing with Morrigan, though," she asserted, watching him writhe in discomfort. "Or in getting the scrolls back…"

"You could be right there, dearie," the Dark One said in a dangerous, low voice as he unexpectedly strode out of the darkness towards them, his face completely unreadable. He was wearing his dragonskin cloak, and Jefferson wondered how long he had been eavesdropping, if you could call it that, considering that they were standing in his courtyard, discussing him.

Rumpelstiltskin brushed past the Hatter, overlooking him completely, and swiftly conjured a fireball, taking aim at Blue. The fairy vanished and reappeared a few feet to the left of where she'd been standing, and the sorcerer invoked another flaming projectile in the palm of his hand, his face drawn to a grotesque mask of hate.

"If you kill me now, you'll never save her," Blue warned him, gasping for air as she barely avoided it by disappearing again when he hurled it at her.

"I'm good at this game, and I can play it all night," the magician sneered, searching for her just inside the gate, and created energy sphere number three effortlessly with a flick of his wrist, but then held back, reevaluating the situation.

"This better be good," he called out, rotating the blazing orb lithely in his hand, "_Tick tock, dearie!_"

She rematerialized by the well near the rear entrance of the Dark Castle that led to the kitchens, and he was suddenly beside her, grabbing her throat and lifting her off the ground. Perhaps she could have freed herself, but she chose not to. Realizing this, he let go of her, giving her a nasty shove, and she tumbled backwards, coughing and clutching at the injuries his fingers had caused on her neck.

"I'm waiting," he breathed, looming over her and making sure she could see the ruinous resolve in his bottomless dark eyes.

"Morrigan has to be stopped," she responded hoarsely, and shot a look at Jefferson, who dared not move.

"Tell me something I don't already know," the sorcerer hissed, and the fireball in his hand flared up brightly.

"Your… _protégé_ has no idea what he has set loose," she continued. "We need to send her back to where she came from, and we need each other to do that."

"Why not kill her and be done with it?" he snapped, straightening, and watched Blue heal herself. From the corner of his eye, he noted that Jefferson had his cap in his hand and was nervously bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet, ready to open a gateway for a quick exit, if necessary.

"She can't be killed," Blue told the Dark One, and he shook his head in disbelief, but she remained adamant. "Take my word for it, she can't. We're not _that_ _powerful_… not between the _three_ of us." She cast another glance at Jefferson, whose eyes widened. "But we can banish her."

"How can you be sure?" the sorcerer inquired suspiciously, aware that Chapeau was taking a few steps towards them so that he could better hear what they were saying, still twisting his cap anxiously. There were a few things Maleficent had obviously forgotten to mention, he thought, and folded his arms across his chest.

"Because I've tried," the fairy queen muttered. "It was all I could do to banish her, in the end. And… I had the dagger then."

The Dark One raised an eyebrow, and his breath caught. This was getting better and better. "The dagger? _My_ dagger?"

She nodded, tucking a stray strand of hair from her brow behind her ear. "_Her_ dagger, actually."

At that, he laughed heartily, rolling his head back on his neck, but he stopped when he saw the expression on her face.

"No," he said incredulously, "That can't be."

"Magic adapts," she reminded him. "You should know that by now. That dagger was forged by old magic, and it started off as a vessel for that same old magic… but the steel was corrupted." She paused, and he tried to wrap his mind around what she was saying.

_Adaptable…? _He'd never have guessed, since the knowledge he'd been able to tap into had never divulged the origins of its substance. He'd never questioned it, and had accepted it for what it was and what it lent him in three hundred years. It wasn't as though he could have asked anyone, since he'd always assumed that there was no one left alive to tell.

"Corrupted…?"

"By fairy blood – by death," she stated.

"Which fairy's blood, exactly?" he asked pointedly, and she cast a fleeting glance up at the tower window.

"Fairy blood from my line," she admitted. He understood what she was getting at and raised his chin defiantly, taking on a defensive stance, murder in his eyes. He made sure she realized that he was glaring at her, watching her every move, and she coughed again as her hand found its way to her throat, rubbing it gingerly.

"The dagger was bound to its holder at first," she continued after an awkward moment of processing his unspoken threat. "To Morrigan while it was hers, to Raven when she took it from Morrigan, and to me when I took it from Raven."

She seemed aeons away when she considered how all that had happened in the space of one night, and the sorcerer would have given a lot to get a glimpse inside her head. She took note of his interest, and he could see that she was searching for a way to elaborate so he would see, but the only thing that seemed feasible required an act of faith.

"The restless nature of the dagger's magic _changed_ when... when it tasted death." She made up her mind then, and held out her hand to him, startling him.

"You mean it went from _being_ a vessel to _needing_ a vessel to contain the reflux of power…" he asked back absently, hesitating to take it.

She remained silent at that, leaving him to draw his own conclusions, to show faith – or not. He wasn't sure if he wanted to. He thought of his boy, of his love in the tower room and the child she would bear him, of the promise he'd already sworn to himself that he'd give her, and since he was now in the dark about their future, he supposed it was time to take a leap if this was so important to the fairy queen that she would come to him and offer him access to her innermost workings on blind faith.

Exhaling audibly and clenching his jaw, he accepted her hand and motioned to the Hatter encouragingly to do the same when Blue signaled him to join them. Jefferson had to think it over, gathering that he might be making himself vulnerable, but he complied when the sorcerer's eyes narrowed at him, and he cautiously placed his hand on Rumpelstiltskin's. Blue's recollections soon took shape, and a vision began to unfold in both men's awareness, directing them towards an event that changed Destiny like none previously. It was but a grain of sand in the cogwheels of time, but it was what had altered the course of history for each of the three standing there irrevocably.

They watched a raven take flight against the icy wind and the heavy leaden snow clouds of the winter sky, the dagger both men immediately recognized as the Dark One's by the ornate meandered blade firmly clutched in its talons. The long, gleaming blade bore no manner of inscription as yet; its magic was strong, but still impartial – only magic, no more, no less.

All at once, an arrow plucked the black bird from the heavens, but it made no noise as it crashed through the boney branches of the dying winter forest and to the ground. The second it touched the earth, it turned into a beautiful young woman in her late twenties; long black hair and eyes the color of the ocean, but restless… and haunted… and terrified as she lay very still on her side, her breathing shallow and labored.

She was still gripping the dagger when the archer who was looking for the bird he'd shot to feed his family found her eventually. He cried out in despair when saw what he'd done, and came to a sliding halt on his knees on the frozen ground next to her. Painstakingly, he pulled out the arrow that had entered her broken body at such an angle that it had gone through her stomach and into her lung. He had no means to stop the bright red blood that surged from the artery he'd lacerated, coating his fingers, covering his cloak and pants, seeping into the mossy brown earth she was resting on, and he had to come to terms with the fact that there was nothing he could do for her. Picking up the dagger he found at her side almost as though he was dreaming, he told her he was truly sorry and meant it, and held her to him determinedly as he swiftly and precisely plunged the blade into her heart. He felt her muscles tense briefly, and he told her that all would be well, rocking her back and forth as he would if one of his daughters had fallen and hurt herself, and then it was over.

The hunter did not know what was happening to him when he began to notice the transformation after Raven had passed away quietly in his arms. He startled when he saw how his skin was turning grey, and he dropped the knife as though the hilt had suddenly become searing hot, but it was too late. He was marked by the absolute power that was released from the weapon by the fairy's blood, and his life would never be the same again, no matter how fiercely he fought the spark that ignited the nature and longing of his own human darkness as he scrambled away from the young woman whose life he'd just ended.

An inscription slowly became visible on the blade, a name, but Rumpelstiltskin didn't much care to know. He blinked and let go of the fairy's hand, backing off a little so they'd be more at ease. He knew the dark haired woman they'd seen bleeding out on the icy duff, and the situation as such reminded him joltingly of events that were yet to happen. He was reluctant to believe that this was just a coincidence, but something told him that he should keep this to himself, keep it very close and guarded, so that he would make the right choices when the time came.

Blue avoided looking at him, apparently collecting her thoughts, and the Dark One sensed that she shared a bond with the woman whose death they had just witnessed, as well as some sort of relationship to the woman he loved. There was something she wasn't telling them, something she hadn't shown them.

"My daughter's was the first life to be taken with the blade, and the dagger became what it did after that," she clarified hesitantly after a while, raising her eyes to the sorcerers, and both Rumpelstiltskin and the Hatter came to understand that even fairy queens had to pay the price of magic at some stage.

The moment passed, and seemingly able to brush away the fleeting sentiment in an instant, Blue feigned a smile at the sorcerer, returning to the calm, cool demeanor they were used to from her.

"I may be the oldest fairy in the forest, but we both know that you are the more powerful when you're holding that dagger," she admitted, and turned to Jefferson. "As for you: you'll be opening a portal for us tonight and set right what you've bungled."

"I – I can't," Chapeau stuttered, shuffling about uneasily and sweating profusely. "I can't open a portal to the world Morrigan came here from. If I could, I would have gone back and gotten my wife home…"

"I know that, Hatter," she returned dryly, "but trust me: _any_ old portal to _anywhere_ will do, as long as you keep it closed after we put her through it."

The sorcerer studied the younger magician's face thoughtfully. He found a lot of emotions there within the space of a few seconds, and then he thought of the motherless child that was waiting for him at some neighbor's house. Jefferson became aware of his stare, and he took a deep breath.

"Look," he began, "I don't know what to say. I'm sorry…"

"Not interested," Rumpelstiltskin cut him off sharply, shaking off the unaccustomed empathy he felt for the man who'd betrayed him, and cast another quick glance up at the tower window, wondering if Belle was still alright by herself. She had promised him to stay put, and he hoped that she would keep her word so that he could keep her safe.

"You better think of at least ten good reasons why I shouldn't throw you off the edge of the world and forget you ever existed when this is over," he told the Hatter, and Jefferson tucked his chin tacitly.

Facing back to the fairy queen, he studied her mien intently. "Well? Can we get down to business now?" he demanded, and she smiled wickedly.

"Alright, business it is," she responded, and there was nothing benevolent about the fairy's features anymore. "Tit for tat. What'll it be, Rumpelstiltskin?"

The sorcerer shrugged and squared his shoulders. "Taking into account the amount of trouble you've been causing me by trying to kill my charge, the Lady of Avonlea, I'd say you'd owe me your word that you will _never_, _ever_ attempt to harm her again, or employ anyone's services to do so."

She quirked an eyebrow at him, and he knew what she was going to say. "You do realize that I'd be a fool to agree to that?"

"You were willing to risk your life and come here to ask me for help. Now, the way I see it, you are far more afraid of the creature my friend here brought back from Arda than you are of me. I could just say no," he breathed, drawing just close enough for her to feel the weight of his argument, "but I do realize the implications of that. Tit for tat, dearie."

She fell silent, pondering her choices, and the sorcerer began to grow impatient. "The writings," she finally said firmly. "I want the writings, and I'll give you my word I will not lay a hand on your… what is she to _you_ anyway, Dark One?"

He didn't know what writings she was talking about and glanced at the Hatter, who nodded. He decided to put off questioning him about this, and couldn't help but smile at the fact that Blue was still oblivious to the nature of his connectedness to Belle. She had no idea, and that had something ironically liberating.

"Just protecting an investment," he mumbled, and the Hatter was baffled by the imperturbability with which the magician was letting on.

"Is that what I am to you? An _investment_?" Belle inquired brokenly from behind him then, and it hit him with the force of a nuclear bomb that she had just lost her _faith_.


	13. Love

_**Thank you for your wonderful reviews and helpful comments: cynicsquest, Aquajasmine23, belle, NobodyToo and SanSon23.**_

_**cynicsquest: I really appreciate you betaing this - thank you!**_

_****__**NobodyToo: I do appreciate any help I can get with typos and grammar – to me, that's what this community is about. I enjoy what I'm doing, and I enjoy learning how to do it better, so that's perfectly fine.**_

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12. Love

Love was what you made of it, he thought, and although he'd never expected that he'd ever love again, he did. The sorcerer loved Belle truly and deeply, but he was certainly aware of the fact that she had no way of knowing that. He was there with her in an instant, and the hurt he saw in her eyes shamed him. He wanted to touch her hand but she pulled back, and he knew that somewhere behind him, Blue was enjoying the show, gleefully anticipating the end of love.

_Love was what you made of it, the Lady of Avonlea thought, and although she'd never expected that he would claim he didn't love her back, she'd always love him anyway. The shame she saw in his eyes didn't quite fit what he'd just said, though, and it gave her cause to question what she'd heard him tell the fairy she'd so often seen around her father's castle just before hardship hit. She wasn't going to let this stand; she needed to him to explain, even if that meant facing the end of love. _

Just then, the Hatter called out to him, and he saw that they had company. The courtyard was filling with timbre wolves, lithely and soundlessly gliding in through the open gate on the north wind, and they were coming around the building towards them from both sides. Their blazing green eyes lit up the darkness like dying stars in the night, and the color drained from Belle's face as she watched them streaming in, circling, drawing closer, glowering at them but not attacking. The Dark One knew they were scouting and securing; Morrigan wouldn't be far behind, and she knew how to make an entrance.

Rumpelstiltskin could _feel_ Belle's panic. He didn't have to think twice and took off his dragonskin cloak, threw it over her shoulders in one swift movement and whispered in her ear before he raised the hood over her head, making her invisible. He hoped she would still be able to place enough trust in him to do as he asked and save herself; there was nowhere he could take her now, nothing he could do but stand and fight for the woman he loved. He'd come full circle in the last three hundred years, and he'd die for her if that was what it took.

_The cloak he'd wrapped around her was light, and it faintly smelled of him. She felt his warmth enveloping her in the fabric, sweeping over her like a summer breeze as she huddled into the soft lining. It made her feel oddly and absurdly safe from the darkness that was coming at them from all sides, and the leather of the hood hummed with the magic of the dragon and his rider, reverberating echoes of the sorcerer's assuring voice. It was telling her where to go when he turned to leave her, and she trusted him still, even though he'd just given her a thousand reasons to doubt and not a single one to believe in him. She did as he asked on blind faith without thinking – hope and inexplicable love breaking up the strange, cruel reality she found herself facing as she walked to the well as if in a dream. _

When he was satisfied that he could no longer determine Belle's whereabouts on sight alone, the sorcerer straightened, squared his shoulders and raised his chin before making his way calmly back to the Hatter, who was waiting for him at the west corner of the building. He ignored the threatening presence of the ferocious black beasts that were gathering near the stables and in the area by the narrow flight of steps leading to the rear, right hand side of the embrasures of the inner wards as he passed them. The entire enclosure was soon teeming with the huge creatures, growling low and dangerously, and there were still more pouring in, he noted, as Jefferson and he strode slowly towards the front entrance of the structure together.

Behind them, the rope that was fastened to the bucket balancing on the broad brim of the brick lined well untied itself quickly and silently, and it vanished, looping around a hook at about two feet below ground level inside and retying itself there.

_Belle lowered herself cautiously to the concealed door just above the water line, opened it as quietly as she could and scrambled into the damp, gloomy tunnel on all fours. Small bits of grit and sandy gravel cut into her hands and knees, and she didn't have a clue where she was going because she couldn't see a thing. Rumpelstiltskin's soft voice was telling her that she had to be brave and trust that it would lead her underneath the castle grounds and the meadow beyond, some way into the woods. It would put enough distance between her and the castle to leave her to decide whether to stay there and wait for him or make a run for the village. He advised her to wait near the exit of the tunnel since it was well concealed, and Morrigan might look for her in the village if they could not defeat her. The people living there would almost certainly not be interested in helping her then, but the winterdragon would find her and take her as far away from here as possible when he knew how this night would end... _

_She didn't want to think about that, trapped in the profound darkness of the claustrophobic shaft that was so confining it wouldn't even allow her to turn around and go back the way she came – but she did. Raw, cutting despair rose acridly in her chest; it obstructed her already ragged breathing, and the closer Morrigan came above ground to where she was lying below the earth, the less Belle was able to fill her lungs. She blocked out the sorcerer's adamant and increasingly urgent commands to get up and get herself out of there, and she was convinced that she was going to suffocate._

Jefferson was surprisingly collected, outwardly, holding his hat by his side as they walked. "We're not going to survive this, are we…" he mumbled, keeping his voice down and not taking his eyes off the gate.

"I really have no idea," the sorcerer replied quietly, his insides churning. There was an icy wind coming their way, and he could see huffs of condensation lingering in the air as he spoke. Half turning to the Hatter then, intently looking at him, he shivered uncharacteristically from the cold that was engrossing Belle, and he tried to reach both of them when he said "I do know for sure, though, that we don't stand a chance in hell if you don't have faith in yourself and what you can achieve."

The Hatter shuddered, inhaled deeply and regained his posture. The Dark One nodded curtly at him, wondering what Belle was going to do. When Blue moved next to the sorcerer so that they were all facing the gate, he wasn't completely convinced that this would go well, but he did have a notion of hope.

_The Lady of Avonlea had been miserable and overcome with the fears of her own vulnerability more times than she cared to remember, and fragmented flashes of recollections that weren't even her own haunted her in the dark... A woman with restless blue eyes brandishing a dagger at Morrigan – unafraid... A girl with those same eyes standing next to her on the battlements of the castle above, watching an army approach – unafraid… The girl using her magic to force Morrigan into a portal – unafraid… Herself, crossing realms to break the Dark One's curse, to be with her spinner, pregnant with his child – all of it unafraid._

_Picking herself up off the dirt floor of the murky, narrow passageway and trying to recover, she realized that she was sick and tired of her own helplessness and resolved that this had to end. She lifted her hand up near her face and imagined light. It appeared in the shape of a small, brightly fluorescing orb rotating on her splaying palm and lit up most of the tunnel ahead with its warm, balmy glow. The fact that it was there because she had created it lessened her dread significantly, and she was relieved to find that she could breathe a lot easier. Her head began clearing, and she felt better. What next, she thought then, and briefly contemplated her options. _

Morrigan sauntered into the inner courtyard serenely, apparently not expecting any kind of resistance. Two of her favorite wolves walked leisurely at her side, and she looked as though she'd just been enjoying a pleasant evening stroll rather than laying ruin to Avonlea mere hours ago, the sorcerer mused. Not a hair of her honey blonde mane was out of place, and her lips and nails were impeccably painted cherry red, reminding him more of the Evil Queen than of any fairy he'd ever seen. Her elegantly flowing silken clothes were immaculate as if she'd just slipped into them, and they clung to her figure sensuously while at the same time allowing for her own mode of floating, unrestricted sinuous movement as she sashayed towards them. The Dark One had never seen such brazen arrogance in anyone who dared seek him out, for whatever reason.

"Well, would you look at that," the evil fairy purred pleasantly, "Not a single protective enchantment to undo, and not a solitary human soldier for my darlings to feast on." Her eyes fell first upon Jefferson, lingering there for a moment, and then on the Blue Fairy. The brash smile she was wearing widened maliciously. "Hello mother. What a lovely surprise."

At that, the sorcerer and the Hatter shared a look of alarm, but Blue took a step forward and turned the snarling hellhounds at Morrigan's sides to puppies that fled yelping into the night.

"How many times have I told you not to bring back strays, dear?" she sneered, and Morrigan rolled her eyes at her somewhat permissively.

"You never were much fun," she said, pouting, and brought her hands up a little way from her sides, spreading her fingers in motioning the beasts to draw closer to their mark, ready to lunge themselves at their prey, the shaggy hair bristling at their necks and their lips drawn back over their razor sharp teeth. Their tension was palpable, and it dawned on Blue that she could not change all of them into something less… harmless.

"I'm going to ask nicely now," Morrigan drawled callously, "but only _once_, and I'll bet some one of you will be able to tell me where I can find the remaining scrolls that weren't with the Guardian in Avonlea." The Hatter knew exactly what she was talking about, but he swore to himself that he would never freely surrender them to her, not now. He was trying very hard to have faith.

_Belle raised her hood and vanished as she nimbly emerged from the well without making a sound. She edged around the building, careful to avoid getting too close to any of the monsters that had focused their attention firmly on the three shapes standing near the gate facing the woman who'd just entered – the woman she's seen _could_ be defeated. She dipped her head, closed her eyes and tried to recall the details of her face, her voice, her stance, the way she walked, and the horrors of what she'd done. She thought _ stop!_ and silence ensued. It was so complete that she hardly dared look up, but when she did, she discovered that she'd immobilized the wolves. They remained still as statues, suspended in time and in this space, but she wasn't finished with them yet. Not by a longshot._

_Replaying the scene that had unfolded in the Great Hall of her father's castle in her mind, she could smell the sour scent of fear emanating from her friends and Maurice's bondspeople as they tried to flee from the wolves that tore through the entrance door; breathe in the coppery residue of the blood that was pooling on the ornate mosaic-tiled floor adhered sickeningly to the inside of her nose. She perceived the consuming presence of Death taking pleasure in the carnage and anticipating the reaping he'd get from this day, and anger swept over her with a vengeance, taking possession of her like a raven swooping right into her soul. Lifting her head to look at the stars, she pictured blackness claiming the evil creatures Morrigan had brought to her home, and the living flesh of the sculpture-like figures began solidifying, turning first to coal and then to dust before they crumbled and slowly began to disintegrate. _

Morrigan took notice before the others did, and she screamed out in impotent rage, trying to locate the origin of the magic that was wiping out her most loyal subjects so very swiftly and thoroughly.

"Come out and face me, Guardian! I'm going to find you, anyway," she screeched, blasting blue lightening at the Hatter, the fairy queen and the sorcerer, who was just charging up a fireball to pitch at her. The fairy queen was hit, and she was on the ground bleeding profusely before the sorcerer could react; it was all she could do to shield herself, muttering an incantation to make herself invisible.

"The Dark One won't be able to save you tonight – watch me send him straight to hell," Morrigan raged, flinging another vicious, searing charge at Jefferson and Rumple.

_Belle saw the sorcerer go to his knees as he absorbed a part of the blue energy coming at them to protect Jefferson. He tried to deflect the current, driving it back at Morrigan, and although she knew he could not be killed, she was aware that he wasn't getting anywhere in trying to keep the Hatter safe. He was weakening himself by dividing his attention and taking the blows aimed for his friend. His magic didn't work on Morrigan because he couldn't get into her head, and he was hard pushed to maintain a status quo for the time being. Considering this, Belle decided that she had to get moving, and she swiftly positioned herself behind Morrigan just inside the gate._

"Open the portal," Rumpelstiltskin hissed at Chapeau, trying to raise himself, but Jefferson had lost his hat and was groping around for it on the ground. He wasted precious time to retrieve it, and when he did, Morrigan was almost on top of them.

_Belle thought of the woman wielding the Dark One's dagger at Morrigan, the girl on the battlements, and the life yet unlived by the sorcerer and herself, the child yet unborn, and a Destiny unfulfilled, and she took down the hood of her cloak. There was no way she was going to stand by and watch the future fall to pieces; she was decisively _unafraid_._

"Hey!" she yelled, clenching her fists and emanating a faint golden haze that no human would have been aware of as she flung a fireball at Morrigan, catching her off guard. It hit her in the side, and the evil fairy stumbled backwards. "You wanted me, here I am!"

The sorcerer died a thousand deaths when he saw the love of his life appear opposite him with Morrigan caught between them. Belle was putting herself in _so much_ danger – she had no fighting experience at all, and Morrigan now had the franticly infuriated look of a cornered mountain lion about her. He knew that they had Belle to thank for dealing with the wolves, whatever she'd done to them, but he didn't want her in the middle of all this. He was overwhelmingly terrified for her. If anything were to happen to her… he didn't know just _what_ he'd do. Whether or not she'd remain a part of his future didn't matter anymore; the only important thing was that she'd survive this night.

Morrigan spun around, momentarily distracted by trying to shield herself while at the same time countering Belle's attack. The sorcerer used the lapse in her attention to give as good as he'd gotten from her, pelting her with fireballs and aiming each one carefully so that he would not hit Belle. The evil fairy began to lose both her footing and her confidence as she stumbled back towards the gate in Belle's direction. Seeing an opening, Jefferson hastily flung his hat close to the faltering fairy; it immediately began spinning and whipping out whirls of green and yellow light in direct proximity to her, opening up the transitional gateway between two worlds. Belle's and the sorcerer's fireballs clouted Morrigan dead on from both sides time and again, and the blonde fairy didn't have the capacity to concern herself with the fissure that was breaching their dimension right at her feet; she hardly had the means to defend herself now, and the Hatter anchored his mind to the hat as it disappeared into another place and time and the magical gateway latched on to it there. He wasn't quite sure where Morrigan's journey would go since he generally tended to plan his trips a little more thoroughly, but Blue had told them that any old world would do, so he didn't much care where she ended up and concentrated on stabilizing the connection. Just then, Blue rematerialized, somewhat the worse for wear, but on her feet nevertheless.

The sorcerer and the fairy queen exchanged a quick glance and combined their powers to create an energy field of blinding whites and silver that went almost two thirds around Morrigan, but from where she was standing, Belle immediately grasped that it would not be enough. She took a moment to try to understand what Rumpelstiltskin was doing and how he was doing it. It cost her all of five seconds to comprehend, and she swiftly followed his lead and closed the circuit around their foe with her own contribution to the sphere they were generating, completing it. Slowly and very steadily, they began reducing the perimeter of the cocoon they'd trapped the evil fairy in and forced her physically towards the portal. She began gravitating to its center the instant she touched the outer rim of the vortex, her eyes wide in the realization that her game was over. She made one last attempt to reach out and grab at Belle's ankle with claw-like fingers, but the force field prevented her from so much as touching the Lady of Avonlea, and suddenly, the portal closed and she was gone, leaving behind a satchel filled with the books the sorcerer had sent Belle for her birthday over the last years, as well as Jefferson's hat,toggling noisily as its spinning wound down on the cobblestone pavement of the courtyard.

Exhaling audibly, Blue sank to the ground and sat back on her heels, nursing the large, nasty gash that still gaped just below her ribcage and a few broken ribs, while Jefferson picked up his hat, and Rumpelstiltskin wordlessly fixed his gaze to Belle's, relishing their moment of triumph and filling his heart with hope. Eventually, Jefferson patted the older man's shoulder and mumbled something in his ear before heading back to the castle without waiting for acknowledgement. The sorcerer assumed that Chapeau would be getting some rest or gathering his belongings; either was good with him since he now knew what Blue would be asking him for when she was done licking her wounds.

Taking a hesitant step towards Belle, he held out his hand to her in an unspoken question, and she astounded him by accepting it right away without taking her eyes off his. A vision of her love swept over him as his doubts subsided, giving way to pure gratitude… for _Beauty_, for _Darkness_, for the _Blood_ on his hands, for his _Fear_, his _Loneliness_, his _Greed_, _Desire_, _Pain_, _Emptiness_, _Hope_, _Betrayal_, _Faith_, but, above all, _Love_. If any one of these had not been, then he wouldn't be standing here now, and he gently pulled the woman who'd shown him all this into his embrace.

"I really hate to interrupt," the fairy queen admonished dryly, "but remember your side of the deal, Dark One."

He had to bite back the snarky remark that was forming on the tip of his tongue when Belle pulled away and gave him a quizzical look, her eyebrows knitting anxiously. "It's alright," he told her softly, "It's really nothing to worry about. A very small price to pay, _my love_."

Leading her back inside the castle and up the spiral staircase to the tower room with Blue limping along behind them carrying the satchel, he thought about their Destiny, and it saddened him to find that he didn't know where it would be steering them now. However, they hadn't reached the uppermost tread yet when he felt an image of the future take form in his mind, clearly and vividly as ever.

He saw himself, and he was old. His hair was white, and his back was bent. He saw wolves. They had returned, and this time he would be pitting himself against them alone – no longer the Dark One, no longer immortal; merely an aged sorcerer standing in the crumbling ruins of the world he'd once known. Belle was not with him. He'd never found his son, and the savior had never been born. The Evil Queen was long dead, and while he could distinctly hear the tolling of the bell calling them all to return to the Ice Palace, he knew he would never reach it. Not alone.

Everything was wrong. Rumpelstiltskin's breath caught, and he had to stop at the top of the stairs, feeling all of his three hundred years as he remembered the vision he'd just had of himself and the last days of his life. It didn't matter to him that he would be old one day and die, not in the least, not anymore. _But Belle had not been with him_, and this was _not_ how it was supposed to be, he told himself in disbelief, this was not how he would let it end.

"What is it?" Belle asked worriedly, bringing him back to the here and now, searching his face. "Are you alright?"

He forced a smile and squeezed her hand. "Yes. I'm fine, just tired."

"Since when does the Dark One tire?" Blue inquired sarcastically, but he chose to ignore her and entered the tower room ahead of Belle.

Lying on his desk was the last book he'd given the Lady of Avonlea only the previous day when all had still been well; the one she'd used to find him when nothing had been well anymore. The other book that should have been there was missing, but the sorcerer didn't flinch. _What was Jefferson thinking?_ he sighed to himself inwardly and hoped that Belle would not give them away when he handed her book to the fairy queen. He almost expected her to say something, yet Belle's expression didn't shift in any way.

"Is that all?" Blue asked, scrutinizing him before training her glance on Belle, and he nodded.

"That's the last one in my possession," he assured her, avoiding the outright lie, and she tucked it into the bag with the others, seemingly satisfied.

"Now, I sincerely hope that you'll think to keep _your_ side of the bargain," he reminded her, a dangerous undertone in his voice, and Blue went back to her usual benevolent smile before she turned to leave, closing the door behind her.

When he was sure she was gone, he enfolded Belle in his arms, gazing intently into her eyes, and pressed his lips to hers fervently, crushing her to him. She responded to his kiss much like he remembered her doing from another time, and he relished the intimacy they shared even though they hardly knew each other from this time and place. That had to mean something, he thought to himself, and recalled every last one of his cherished memories of their love, gifting them to her mind when their hands touched, their bodies moving flush against one another as they kissed. There was longing and desire, faith, hope… but above all: there was still _love_.

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**_Next (and last): Destiny._**


	14. An Epilogue To Love: Destiny

_**Appreciate the wonderful reviews and comments: Aquajasmine23, CJ Moliere, Twyla Mercedes, belle, cynicsquest**_

_**cynicsquest: thank you for taking the time to beta this. I love getting your input, and I value your help with the formal editing as such greatly. **_

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An Epilogue to Love: Destiny

_Destiny_, he thought, was not always what it seemed. It was almost nightfall again when Belle and he left the Dark Castle. The winterdragon took them back to Avonlea on silent wings, and when they passed over the field where the young Dutchess had given birth to Belle almost thirty years ago, the sorcerer's eyes became dark and distant. This was where it had begun. This was where he'd unwittingly started to change Destiny.

The dragon set them down just outside the castle walls, and he felt Belle's trepidation as they neared the gates. He slipped his arm around her waist as they entered the grounds; all was as she had left it after the wolves had come.

"Don't look left, and don't look right," he told her gently because there wasn't a spell he could cast to mask the horror from her eyes. She was a fairy, she had a very powerful magic, and she would not be fooled by his. "Just keep looking straight ahead, sweetheart."

She did, and he took her inside, through the Great Hall and up the main staircase to her room. What was left of the door lay scattered in pieces all over the floor, and the wind ripped and tattered at the curtains through the shattered window, howling eerily through the halls and vestibules of the upper levels of the palace.

He sat her down on the bed, came next to her and took her hands in his. "I love you," he said, "I'll always love you… so very much."

She pressed herself to him, breathing in his scent one last time. "I _will_ see you again," she replied softly, faith and hope wavering slightly, but love still coursing through her essence strongly enough. "We will be together."

He nodded, and moved up farther on the bed, pulling her along with him until his back was resting against the headboard, and she drew up her legs and snuggled as close to him as she could. After a while, when he knew it was time, and he fished one of the flagons he'd filled only two short days ago in the hope that he'd never use them out of his pocket, uncorked it and gave it to her.

"So this is the price of magic…" she mumbled sadly, staring at it as she turned it in her hand, and he slowly shook his head.

"No," he contradicted her, the ghost of a smile touching the corners of his mouth but not his eyes. "This is us thwarting _Destiny_."

He looked down at her and soothingly brushed back a stray strand of hair from her brow. "You will not remember who I am, nor anything that happened when I was anywhere near you," he explained, and she gave a small sigh. He wished there was another way, but he could not think of one to reverse what he'd set in motion. "I'm so sorry, Belle…"

"Don't be," she replied, and tenderly kissed him goodbye. "I love you, and I know that everything will be alright." She emptied the flagon in one go, resolutely swallowing its vile-tasting contents quickly as she handed it back to him, grimacing, and laid her head on his lap, choosing to trust in the probability that there was a right for every wrong, and light at the end of every darkness.

"Fall asleep, my love," he begged her then, his voice low and assuring as he could manage while his heart was breaking. He stroked her hair as a drowsy fugue from the potion overtook her, its magic coursing through her. "Fall asleep," he whispered again waveringly, and it tore him apart when she did. Carefully, he maneuvered her head off of his lap and onto the pillow, rising from the bed to stand beside it. He watched her magic induced slumber, knowing that every memory she had of him was slowly fading away so that not even a shadow of him would remain in her dreams when she woke. She shivered slightly and he grabbed a blanket from the foot of the bed, bending over her to place it atop her. Securing it over her shoulders, he couldn't resist pressing a soft, parting kiss to her velvety cheek, lingering there for longer than he should have. His heart stilled when she unexpectedly opened her eyes, heavy laden with the deep sleep that was embracing her. Holding his dark, reptilian eyes captive in her own, she whispered, "I will always love you," before she closed them and drifted away.

Leaving Avonlea, he took the second flagon from his pocket, but he hesitated to drink from it until the dragon was soaring over the rooftops of his castle. Asking his companion not to set him down just yet, to keep circling, he finally tipped back his share of the potion that he'd already given Belle, clutching the vial with trembling fingers. He felt the liquid burn its way down into his stomach and tried to hold on to snippets of the previous night and day for as long as they would remain with him, for as long as he could stay awake.

Her face was imprinted in his mind, and he was sure he would never forget it as he closed his eyes.

_"Tell me what I am to you," _he heard her say somewhere in the back of his mind, and he had replied, _"You are _everything_ to me. Whatever else you'll choose to believe, I want you to know that because it's the only thing that makes sense to me in all this, the only reality of this present moment we're living in that I have to offer to you right now."_

A single tear trailed down his cheek as he fought sleep.

Her voice echoed in his mind, and half-dreaming as he was, he spread his arms wide as if he could recapture it if it began to evade him.

_"You have been sending me books all my life…"_ She'd been holding his hands in hers.

_"… because you love to read."_

_"When did I begin to love to read?"_

_"When I __stopped sending you snow globes and _started sending you books…" he'd had to admit to her and to himself, realizing that this was how it had been.

He slumped over, pressing his cheek to the warm dragonhide and tried to imagine the scent of her hair when he'd held her, barely able to keep himself together as her words reverberated in his head a moment before they would be gone forever.

_"I knew whom I was speaking to in the garden," _she'd confessed, turning in his arms to look at his face. _"I knew who you were when you kissed me for the very first time. I've known you all my life. You were always there… "_

_Love_, he thought before he drifted off on the back of the winterdragon, was like a delicate flame. Once it was gone, there was a chance that it would be gone forever… but living it, _truly living at all _was always about taking risks… so… even if love killed more people than any plague or natural catastrophe, and even if it ruined more existences and cost more livelihoods than any war, it was worth it. Love was what you made of it, and love would take him back to her, because the most powerful magic in any world was the human soul on fire, and he remembered what it was like to be human because of her – just as he would remember what it was like to _love_ because of her. _That_ was his Destiny.

_The Beginning_

* * *

_**I'm seriously going to miss writing this. I loved getting inside the sorcerer's head, as well as creating the background stories of the characters I borrowed from OUAT – it was great fun, and I was extremely immersed in what I was doing without really having to think about where this was going. 'Dark Visions' started out as a one-shot, but the great response "Beautiful" got prompted me to make more of it than initially intended... which is why **__**I'm also seriously going to miss YOU. Thank you everyone who followed, favorited and reviewed or PMed for all your encouragement, the helpful comments and the great correspondence.**_

_**I loved that you went on this dark little journey with me. **_

_**-EMH**_

* * *

_**Oh, and just in case you're wondering why I ended this story with 'The Beginning': That's because it ends where season 1 of the show beginns. The reading-order of my other stories to which this one refers would be:**_

_**1. Return To The Enchanted Forest (sets in after 3.11)**_

_**2. Raven (sequel to Return To The Enchanted Forest, complete)**_

_**3. Hall of Mirrors (sequel to Raven, in work)**_


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